


Mundane to Monstrous Ghost

by Guardian_Rex



Series: Nature, Preteternatural, Paranormal, Supernatural [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Death and ressurection, Gen, Headcanons Everywhere, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Games, Multilingual Danny Fenton, Multilingual Sam Manson, Multilingual Tucker Foley, Restarting despite the warnings, Rewrite, Space Core! Danny, Suicide mention, The Fentons are a family of Geniuses, The Ghosts have backstories, Transgender Danny Fenton, headcanons, school shooting mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2020-06-27 18:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 75,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19796212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Rex/pseuds/Guardian_Rex
Summary: Danny Fenton was a boy who loved the stars, no matter what world he was looking up at them from.  He never believed his parents when they said that they were trying to find the world of ghosts, but every world they went to had the most beautiful stars and constellations for him to draw out for his friends.  Friends he would do anything for, even a stupid dare he knew was a bad idea.He never thought that tripping on an out of place wire would show him the universe, every universe and every star unfolding into existence and exploding to death at the moment of his own, but there was.Except he didn't die.





	1. Lunch Bites Back

_ " _ Alright I showed you the portal, _ " he said. " _ Can we go now before my parents get back? It doesn't work."

_ " _ C'mon Danny, a 'Ghost Zone?' Aren't you curious?" _ Sam walked toward the octagonal metal frame, large enough Jack Fenton himself needn’t duck down. She stared into the darkness, eyes wide. _

_ " _ I'm more curious about why it failed to even open up to a destination. _ " Danny heard himself sigh, but was that really him? " _ I checked their math, it's just as spot on as ever. _ " _

_ " _ As ever? _ " Tucker crowed from where he looked over notes that weren't meant for Non-Fenton eyes. " _ This math is insane, and that's my whole specialty! _ " _

_ " _ We've been to other worlds before _." And whispers of those worlds, of endless possibilities, rose in the back of his head. He swore they were right there, just over his shoulder, but when he looked there was nothing. " _ This should've worked. It wouldn't take us to some 'Ghost Zone' - it's a dumb name and ghosts aren't real - but it would take us somewhere new _." Danny grinned. " _ Just imagine the awesome stuff that we could find this time. Maybe sentient life! _ " _

_ " _ Well alien enthusiast, _ " Sam drawled. " _ Head on inside and see what's wrong. Maybe you can fix it? _ " _

_ The whispers rose into a crescendo, and they were shouting over Sam's voice, Tucker's voice, Danny's own thoughts were crowded out by the din of world after world demanding his attention. His head was going to split open, his body shook from the sound, each cell in tune with the wrong world and he was falling apart and coming undone- _

Danny's alarm blared. The sun shone. Clearly, it was time to get up, but Danny disagreed. He pulled his cover over his head, hoping to block out the noise and light. For a moment, it felt like that had worked, for the world was dark and quiet again. It took Danny a moment too long to realize how unnaturally quiet it had gotten, and he was met with the floor, pajamas partly stuck within the bed.

Danny grumbled under the bed for a moment. "I feel like all of this is telling me that the day is gonna suck. Maybe I should stay in bed?" When everything began to haze up and fade, Danny sighed and concentrated. A blink, the world was back. "Or it's a sign that I have to get out of bed right away. Ugh."

Alarm turned off, teeth brushed, shower taken, other morning routine stuff done, Danny found himself dressed in a white T-shirt with a red star on it. Down the stairs he tred. His parents were absent. Jazz wasn't. "Good morning Danny!" No one should be so cheery, Danny felt.

"Sup Spazz?"

"The fridge got splashed by Dad last night. I ran out and bought some milk, and we still have cereal and bread." Jazz ignored his prodding. How rude. As a comedian, Danny worked very hard at thinking up puns and jokes. "Dad replaced the toaster the other day."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Does it burn the Fenton logo into the bread now?" The teen poured himself a bowl. Dad might actually do that after all.

"No, actually, it presses his face into it instead." Danny groaned. All of his suffering under the embarrassment that was his father went into it. The sound wasn't enough.

"Yup."

Danny and Jazz sat in silence while he ate. Like all quiet times, his existence came to mind.  _ I should tell them. Mom and Dad might be able to help understand. They wouldn't hurt me, I'm their son. Why haven't I told them? _ The spoon fell through his hand.  _ Good question. _ Danny didn't want to think too hard on the answer.

The door to the basement lab opened up and hit the stopper on the wall with a bang. Mom, in her teal hazmat suit. Some device with an antenna was in her hands. She followed the beeping from it and pointed the device at Danny. Dad came out of the lab a step behind her, an orange jolly giant, and Danny leaned back. "Um?"

"There is a ghost directly in front of you." The machine droned, and Danny felt every muscle in his body tense up. How? He was careful! Now they'd think he was a hostile body snatcher or-

"Well that can't be right," Mom said. She adjusted a few dials, Dad looking down at the machine intently with her. Danny felt the light in the world fade away again. He forced it back just in time for his parents to look back up at him. "The Fenton Finder™ must still need a few bugs worked out."

"It's designed to use Fenton Satellites to track down ghostly ecto signatures."

"Dad," Danny asked slowly. "How many satellites have you hacked into for this?"

"Danny, you know we launched more satellites than just the few you've seen us launch don'cha?" Danny wondered, idly, how legal those satellites were. He'd have to look that up later.

"That doesn't tell me how many-"

"The number of satellites we have in orbit isn't relevant honey." Mom waved off the question and set the Fenton Finder on the table. "We'll have to dig in and see what's wrong with the receiver."

_ What better time than when I’m being pointed at? _ Danny took a breath. "Actually, guys, there's something I need to tell you."

"That's not all you need Danny."  _ Why now? _ Danny loved his sister, really, but this was the worst time. "You need guidance. Parents who can provide it!" Jazz was in front of him now, frowning at their parents. Danny buried his face in his hands.

"Now Jazz," Mom said. "I know that what we do doesn't always make sense. However, you're only-"

"Only 16 physically." Danny backed away from Jazz a bit. "But mentally, I'm an adult." That was likely the least mature argument Danny could think of about maturity. "And I will not allow your obsession with ghosts to pollute the mind of this impressionable child!" She grabbed him. The most uncomfortable hug there ever was, that's what Danny was experiencing. "Come you abused unwanted wretch." Did something get in her coffee? Did he pull a prank recently? "I'll drive you to school." She was rubbing her license in his face, he'd done something to her recently.

Once they were in Jazz's car, Danny turned to his sister and stared at her. "Jazz," he said once they were driving down the road. "What the hell was that?"

"You looked like you were struggling with something," Jazz said. As though that explained anything. "Whatever it is you were going to say, you shouldn't tell just because you think you have to. Do it because you want to."

"Listen, my dear false sense of maturity, I appreciate that. I did want to tell them though." Danny leaned back and stared through the window. Familiar buildings passed by, other cars going at the speed limit to avoid traffic passed in a blur. "Thanks though."

"No problem." There was a quiet din of classical music in the car for a beat. When they came to a red light, Jazz turned and raised a brow at him. "What were you going to tell them?"

Did Danny want to tell Jazz about this before his parents? Maybe. She could help him gauge their parents' reactions better. At the same time, she might think he's joking. Ghosts don't exist. Jazz's motto. "I was going to tell them I'm bisexual." Not a lie. It was just less important to him.

"Oh. That's great Danny!" Jazz beamed at him and Danny squinted. How did she keep all that sunshine in those teeth? Jazz rambled about support for the rest of the ride. Danny suffered.

Danny met with his friends, Sam and Tucker after Jazz parked. They were easy to spot. Sam was in her usual short-sleeved black shirt with a pair of black shell pants. Tucker had on simple green khakis and that yellow sweater his mom knit him over the summer.

“Hey, guys.” The pair greeted him back and they soon walked into the green painted halls of Casper High. “I’m shocked, honestly, no fights over food, how much tech should be used in the world or anything. How tired are you guys?”

“Shut,” Sam growled. “Or else I will hurt you.”

“Besides, we both know that the world needs better tech to fix the problems we’ve made for ourselves.” Tucker looked so smug and proud of his claim. Sam kicked him. Tucker hit the ground with a yelp. “Foul play!”

“The warning wasn’t just for Danny.” Sam rolled her eyes while Danny helped Tucker to his feet.

“I think the foul play here is your combat boots.” Danny sidestepped said boots, having expected it. The slug to the shoulder still stung a tiny bit. They chatted like that for a bit until the crowds were gone and Danny’s far too sensitive ears could pick up no other conversations. “So, I was planning on telling my parents.”

Sam scowled. “ _ Why _ ?”

“Finally.” Tucker stared at the goth incredulously. “Um.”

“Parents don’t listen, Danny, nor do they understand.”

“Are we still talking about my coming out here or yours?” Sam at least managed to look apologetic and Danny counted that as a win. “Like, I am entirely willing but can I just… vent a bit?”

“Sure Danny. We’re here for you.” Sam smiled and Danny gave a small smile back. He knew it wasn’t a very convincing smile.

“I was thinkin about it. Mom and Dad made the portal in the first place, right? And they’ve made several in the past.” So many exotic and exciting places that he could say he was one of the first two kids to go to. “So maybe they might know how to fix what’s wrong with me.”

“Is it even something to fix though?” Danny felt Sam’s question was answered when he realized he had walked through a vending machine. “You can walk through walls, disappear and fly! That’s so much cooler than what anyone else can do!”

“Cooler is an interesting way to phrase it Sam.” Danny snorted and pulled a notebook from his backpack. “I’ve been trying to keep track of it all. I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to make sense of all this without help though.” Everything turned unreal besides himself and the journal. Air wasn’t passing through his lungs, light had blinked out, and Danny was slipping downward. Then his friends were hoisting him up out of the floor and everything snapped back. “Thanks.”

“Hey, you’ve always got our help Danny.” Tucker kept an arm around his shoulders. The weight was reassuring. “We’re not exactly scientific experts or anything though. I can do some research maybe, and we’ll always pull you out of the floor if we can, but your parents might be able to help you figure out control over this.”

“Maybe they could help build some kind of belt or extra wristband that keeps me tethered to the real world? This Wristray™ works pretty well.” Though what was even real anymore? Was the earth what was truly real, or did Danny become even more real than that when it all started fading away?

Sam rudely interrupted his existential crisis. “Yeah, all that’s nice and good and all, but what if that doesn’t go so well? What are you going to say? ‘Hey mom and dad, remember when your ghost portal turned on? Yeah, I was inside it when it did that and now I’m kinda ghostly, think you can help?’”

“My voice is deeper than that, I’ll have you know.”

“By half an octave, and that’s not the important part.”

“I think getting grounded is worth it Sam.” With how he floated off all the time it was actually what he needed.

“Danny your parents are ghost  _ hunters _ . They might not believe it’s possible to be Schrodinger's boy like you are and assume that you… that you died. And that you’re an imposter. Or worse, they think a ghost kidnapped you and has been impersonating you or something.” The boys stopped and stared at her. “With how your parents think about ghosts, where does that leave you if you tell them?”

“On… on the dissection table... “ Dad  _ hated _ ghosts. He ranted and raved about how he’d tear a ghost apart if he saw one. The Fentons had always been a force against ghosts. Jack Fenton had only one problem with how the family used to deal with ghosts: he didn’t get to figure out better ways to destroy them  _ while _ he was destroying them. And that was just his dad. “They’d never listen to me if they thought I was a ghost.”

“Alright, alright, before we go triggering panic attacks here, let’s think.” Ah Tucker. Where would Danny be without him? Tucker pulled Danny closer and messed with his hair until Danny batted his hand away. “Your parents are scientists. Which means that if given sufficient evidence, they  _ have _ to change their beliefs on ghosts, right? After all, what respectable scientist doesn’t base their judgments off of the data? So, we just have to change their minds about ghosts before you go telling them your secret.”

“With the ghosts attacking us in the middle of parks and the street at night that’ll definitely be easy.” Sam huffed, but managed a smile. “That just makes it a challenge though. And there’s nothing I’m better at than changing people’s minds.”

“Thanks, guys.” Danny pulled his friends into a tight hug, and they hugged him right back. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  
  


The day passed as usual. Danny took his notes while the teachers taught. Lancer nearly bored him completely to death. Danny's pencil fell through his fingers only 4 times, so that was great! Danny kept phasing out of the real world whenever Lancer's monologuing about some old poet got so dry that he'd normally start daydreaming. Maybe it was tied to his ADHD? That'd be just Danny's luck. Looking down at his notebook when the bell rang, Danny saw more notes questioning if his meds were even working anymore due to being part ghost than about the assignment. "Crap."

“What’s wrong Danny?” Tucker was stuffing his phone back into his pocket. Some android he’d modified. Danny should get Tuck to help him with his own phone. It kept dying on him way faster than it should. “You still with us?”

“I think losing focus makes me lose tangibility.” Danny stood up and swapped out notebooks, quickly writing it down. He followed Tucker out the door, waved at Sam, and settled between them. “I kept losing tangibility when Lancer’s rambling had me on the edge of dreamland.”

“That reminds me,” Sam said. “Danny have you been keeping up with things pill wise?”

“I think I forgot it this morning. Which kinda sucks, but that usually just means daydreams almost all day.” Now it meant a game of Focus, Doodle or Slip Through The Floor. “Think the notes will help convince my ‘rents to reconsider ghosts?”

“It’ll take a  _ bit _ more than that, Danny.” The expression on Danny’s face was most certainly not a pout, as he had told his friends many times. It was a scowl. A scary one at that! “Chill, pouting puppy. I told you, I can convince anyone of anything! I even convinced the school to change up their horribly unhealthy menu and give ultra-recyclo-vegetarianism a chance.”

“Pardon? Láojià? Pardonu min?” Danny leaned away from Tucker as he repeated himself. “Did you just say you shoved your veganism onto our menu?”

“I wore them down from piling all that mystery meat onto our trays and switching to a new menu for the week.”  _ Oh, sweet Polaris, this is not going to go well. _

Sure enough, once they got into the teal bricked cafeteria, they saw a banner over the lunch line.  This Week, Ultra Recyclo-Vegetarian . When the lunch lady set a plate on their trays it held… “Sam is this grass growing out of a bun? I thought bread was made from wheat?”

“I haven’t eaten a vegetable in 14 years and I’m not about to let you force me to!” Danny could tell that Tuck’s theater classes were going well.

“This is change, Tucker. Change is good.”

“That’s debatable, Sam.” Danny sat down at their table and lifted a spoonful of his turfwich. “I don’t remember being asked if I wanted this specific change. Or if I wanted the menu changed at all.”

“Yeah, and I sure as hell didn’t want it changed like this!” Tucker pointed at his plate as though it had personally offended him. Then he lifted his cup. “This is  _ wheatjiuce _ Sam!”

“Tucker, you’re just mad because now you gotta give healthy food a shot.” Sam actually took a bite of her grass bread and Danny felt his stomach turn a little at the thought of it.

“Tucker might be a bit hyperbolic here, but I’m not.” Danny set down his spoon and leveled a flat look Sam’s way. “How did you wear the school board down about this without a petition? And why? This is clearly not what anyone but you and a few other vegans wanted.”

“I don’t see what’s so wrong with ushering in some change, Danny. The stuff on the menu was ridiculously unhealthy for everyone!” Sam pointed her spoon at him as though giving a lecture. “I’m not sure that mystery meat was even edible.”

Before Danny could get his point across, Lancer set a hand down on the goth’s shoulder. “Ah, Miss Manson. The school board wanted me to personally thank you for ushering in this welcome experiment to our cafeteria.”  _ Welcome is the last thing this experiment is and he knows it _ .

Tucker did that thing he sometimes did to show off his weird sense of smell. He gave the air a couple whiffs and glared accusingly at Lancer. “If it’s so welcome that we’re eating garbage then why do you smell like steak?”

“The rumors of the all steak buffet in the teachers’ lounge are completely untrue. We simply all did our part to help with clearing out the meat from the fridges in the back.” Danny had never heard a more blatant lie. Lancer left with a quick extra thanks to Sam. 

Sam grinned before turning a scowl Tucker’s way. “It’s not garbage, it’s recyclable organic material.”

“It’s garbage,” the boys said in unison, glaring at Sam. A chill rushed up Danny’s spine and out of his mouth in a cloud of blue vapor. “Guys, we’ve got a problem.” Something cold, soft, and gross smacked into the back of Danny’s head.

“FENTON!”

“Make that two problems.” Danny turned to the familiar bellowing of his least favorite person in the school with a cringe.

Dash Baxter stood far taller than a high school freshman should. The American dream boy. Blue eyes, blond hair, square-jawed, quarterback who never took off his letterman jacket. His fist was a big fan of Danny’s everywhere. Mainly his stomach. Dash held up his plate and glared straight at Danny. “I ordered 3 mud pies. You know what they gave me?”  _ Stars his voice still sounds so nasally. Puberty isn’t his friend in at least one department. _ “3 Mud Pies. With mud. From the ground! All because of your girlfriend!”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” The thing to focus on. Truly, that was the only inaccurate thing Dash had even said. And now Danny was dragged off his feet and into Dash’s face. Wonderful.

“These are the best years of my life. After high school, I either get a scholarship or everything is over. How am I supposed to enjoy my glory days eating mud?”  _ Actually study so that you can get in on more than just a scholarship? Use your brain for literally anything? _

“Actually it’s topsoil.” Sam was the worst help right now.

“Whatever!” Dash pushed Danny back into his seat, head banging against the table. Dash shoved his mudpie plate onto the table regardless and when Danny could see clearly, he growled. “Eat it. All of it.”

Behind Dash, Danny saw the pale green form of a woman in an apron floating behind the food line area. What he did next, Danny blamed on the ghost. “Garbage fight!” And Dash’s plate was in his face. It made a satisfying splatter sound.

He ducked under the table, grabbed Sam from her argument and sneaked his way under the fire of teens all too easily riled up and throwing gross mud around. “You’re gonna pay for this Fenton!”

“Wonderful, I’m his favorite.”

They got behind the counter area where the food was and saw a green woman wearing a pink uniform, a pink hat, yellow gloves and a white apron. She was floating a whole foot off the ground and looking all over the kitchen. “Huh. Shouldn’t be so bad.” On one hand, Danny did want to prove that ghosts weren’t inherently evil to his parents. Getting a conversation in with one of them was a good step. “She looks as harmless as my grandmother.” On the other, Danny was going to stuff Tucker’s hat in his mouth for jinxing them.

“Shouldn’t she be haunting a bingo hall?” Danny raised a brow as the woman turned around, red eyes focused on a bowl of salad in her hands. She looked up and floated over faster than most old ladies could walk.

“Hello, children.” She sounded innocuous enough. “Can you help me? Today’s lunch is meatloaf, but I don’t see the meatloaf. Did someone change the menu?” Something about the way she asked that raised Danny a few goosebumps. Maybe the inflection. Maybe the green light coming from inside of her.  _ Why am I so nervous _ ?

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I did.”

The ghost’s hair turned into white flames. Her teeth sharpened. Her voice echoed in the least natural way possible. Emerald flames covered the ghost’s body as she swelled in size. “ _ You changed the menu? _ _ The menu has been the same for 50 years! _ ” Based on the unnatural winds, and the fires, and all of that shit, Danny was rather certain his wrist ray wasn’t going to cut it this time.

Pushing his friends behind him, Danny reached inside of him for that ball of cold buzzing energy in the center of his chest. He’d been keeping it locked up tight for a while, trying to keep himself normal. Instead, he pushed the energy out, imagined it filling his body up entirely. “I’m goin ghost!” White light gathered at his core and spread out over Danny’s body. His clothes were replaced with a black hazmat suit, white utility belt, boots and gloves. Danny’s bangs bleached themselves into a silvery white and the world shifted into something in between real and fantasy.

“Look, leave now, or I’ll have to fight you! And I really don’t wanna have to punch an old lady.” She raised her hand. The plates and dishes on the sink counter were blanketed in green light and flew at Danny. “Shit!” Danny focused on that feeling of being unreal, and everything but the Lunch Lady and himself faded away. The blurs of her plates flew through him and Danny felt the tingle of when he reached through a hologram. Amazed, he snapped back into reality a moment later.

Clearly a good thing, as the Lunch Lady was flinging plates at Sam and Tucker as well. Danny zoomed over and caught the plates as best he could, setting them down on the sink counter. “If NASA doesn’t become a thing I could look into the exciting career of being a busboy.”

The ovens started dancing. If it weren’t for the green smoke, Danny’s have blamed it on the school’s budget. “ _ I control lunch, _ ” said the increasingly overdramatic dead lady. “ _ Lunch is sacred! Lunch has rules! _ ”

“Ok, literally since when has lunch been sacred or had rules?” Danny kept his hands raised to protect his face. His eyes rolled but his vision never stopped focusing on the lunch lady. The panoramic view was nauseating.

“ _ Since I wrote the menu 60 years ago! _ ”

“I’m honestly shocked they haven’t changed it in so long. This is why it needed to change!” Sam crossed her arms, face paler than usual, shoulders tight, and eyes set in a glare.  _ Probably mad that she didn’t keep her wrist-ray on like I told her she should. _

Rather than contest that with some nonsense about respecting authority or something else Danny expected out of any adult Sam argued with, the ghost left. And the dancing ovens opened their doors and jets of green fire shot out. Danny, Tucker, and Sam all barely dodged out of the way before the ovens disconnected from the wall and flew at them.

Danny grabbed onto his friends’ shoulders and pushed that feeling of slipping through the cracks into them. Danny yanked them all through the wall and they landed with a chorus of grunts. Three thuds came from the wall they phased through.

“This is the thanks I get for thinking like an individual?” Sam griped as soon as she was on her feet again.

“No,” Tucker said, voice shaking along with his body. “This is what you get for forcing your individual view of what everyone needs onto thousands of children.”

Danny looked around, hackles still raised. It didn’t feel like the fight was over. At the nearest T section of the hall, Danny was proven right. The Lunch Lady was floating there, glaring at them. An unnatural breeze blew through the halls. The lights exploded. The air chilled until Sam and Tucker were rubbing their arms. “Go get your wrist rays!”

“We’re nowhere near our lockers, Danny!” Sam reminded Danny that only he kept his on him at all times. They needed to fix that immediately.

Before Danny could think further on that, a piece of steak slapped him in the face. And then another. A lot of steaks were flying his way, some ribs and burgers too. Danny phased through it all, staring as it adhered to the Lunch Lady’s semicorporeal form. Soon she was a silhouette of cooked meat and steak sauce. “Wow, just looking at that is giving me cholesterol problems.”

“ _ PREPARE TO LEARN WHY MEAT IS THE MOST POWERFUL OF THE 5 FOOD GROUPS! _ ” Wonderful. She was screaming now. Then she held up a cookie. “Cookie?” Sam shook her head no. “ _ THEN PERISH!” _

“Forget it lady. The only thing here with an expiration date is you!” Danny slid in front of Sam, the obvious target, and readied himself for a fight. The world tilted and the energy that was thrumming throughout his body retreated in a wave of light that swept over him. Danny nearly hit the floor, exhausted, and activated his wrist ray. “Well shit.” Danny took aim, fired, and burned a hole through the meat monster before he was sent horizontal into Tucker. When Danny looked up, he saw Sam being swept away in a whirlwind of meat.

“Change back, we gotta go after her!” Tucker scrambled to his feet, pulling Danny up with him. The boys almost ran, but a hand clamped over both of their shoulders.

“You two aren’t going anywhere.” Danny recognized that voice. Mr. Lancer was glaring at them balefully, Dash Baxter within arm’s reach.

“Told ya you’d pay, Fenton!”


	2. Food Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fights, both physical and verbal, abound! Local Science Boy Tired of Friends' Arguement. Local Astronaut Trying Real Hard not to die Here. Local Ghost Hunting Family Talk SCIENCE and Local Art Boy Does Research

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI I know i'm a day late, i apologize, but HERE have this chapter and I hope you like it!

Danny and Tucker sat in the vice principal’s office. On the wall next to the door was an array of monitors that showed security feeds. Across from it was a desk with a globe and the filing cabinet that Lancer was going through. If Danny had to guess the chairs were intentionally made to be uncomfortable. An added punishment for even being there.

“Tucker Foley,” Lancer droned. “Chronic tardiness. Talking in class. Repeated loitering by the girls’ locker room. Danny Fenton. 34 dropped beakers in the last month. Banned for life from handling all fragile school property, but no severe mischief before today. So, gentlemen, tell me.” Lancer set down the folders he was reading from on his desk and leaned forward to yell in their faces. “Why did the two of you conspire to destroy the school’s cafeteria?”

“Dash started it when he threw his mud pie into the back of my head!” Danny was going to need a thorough shower later, but for now, turning his head to display that he’d been hit in the head with mud was enough for him. 

“He literally tried to make Danny  _ eat _ the mud.” This is why Tucker was Danny’s best friend. He and Danny were on the same wavelength.

“Besides, destroy the cafeteria is pretty hyperbolic, don’t you think?”  _ Please lighten up on us because I used a vocab word. _

“Mr. Baxter, as well as everyone caught on camera participating in the food fight will be punished for it. You two, however, are taking the first of it with him.” Lancer stood and walked out the door. “I’m going to fully map out your punishments when I return. Mr. Baxter, make sure they don’t leave.” Dash nodded, gave the two of them a dirty glare and then vanished behind the door with a slam.

“We gotta find Sam!” Tucker got up and went around Lancer’s desk. By the time Danny was next to him, Tucker was already going through the security files on Lancer’s computer. “Do not ask why I have his password or how. We don’t have time for that. Oh, thank gods, this place has security cameras in the weirdest places.” On the screen, Tucker tracked the meat sweep through the school until it settled in one place. “Directly below us. Got enough juice?”

Danny closed his eyes and reached inside, stretching into the void of cold winds and vast darkness, and dragged himself into it. It swept outward over his body in a flash and for a moment he had to reorient himself. Danny grabbed onto Tucker and intangibility filled them both. They fell through the floors and stopped right above the floor of the basement. “Is this… a meat locker under the school?”

“See, this is the kinda stuff that Sam needs to get changed. Where they store their food, not what food groups are fed to us.” Tucker started walking, and Danny stood beside him.

“This is like the time she convinced our middle school teachers to hold a Sadie Hawkins dance when no one felt like doing a dance.” Danny rolled his eyes and looked around. “Except this time she’s the one who got kidnapped instead of her nabbing us. Also, repeated loitering by the girls’ locker room?”

“I figured that’d be a great place to meet someone to ask for a date.”

“How are you both a genius and a dumbass at the same time, Tuck?”

Before the geek could valiantly defend his honor, they heard a voice of strained cheer. “My dear child, meat is good for kids. It helps them grow and makes them smile.” The boys looked around the corner and saw Sam stuck in a pile of meat that was definitely inedible now. The Lunch Lady floated in front of her, a fish and a chicken leg held up in either hand. “Why won’t you eat it?”

“We don’t need meat. That’s fact.” Sam never was one to back down when she was championing something. It was something Danny admired about Sam. He never thought food was the hill Sam was willing to literally die on though.

“ _ Silence! _ ” The ghost’s voice echoed and that wind picked up yet again. Danny wondered if he could call up special effects like that for Halloween. “ _ You need discipline, manners, respect. You know where that comes from? Meat! _ Fish, or chicken?”

“Plus, most of the nutrients we need are in fish and chicken,” Tucker muttered. Or at least, he probably thought it was muttering. What it happened to be was loud enough for the ghost to hear them, eyes bright red eyes turned toward the boys.

“I’ll deal with the ghost, you get Sam out of that meat pile.” Danny ran as fast as he could. His fist reared back and collided with the ghost’s head harder than he expected it to. She was launched into the wall. Danny immediately followed up with a kick to the face. Mid-strike the Lunch Lady grabbed onto his ankle and held Danny up while floating upright.

“ _ This is why you need meat! You’re skin and bones! _ ” She tossed Danny across the room, and at the last second, he phased through the wall. And the ground. It took a couple seconds of carefully making the tips of his gloves more - or less, it was still hard to tell - real to pull himself back up to the basement.

There, Danny found shish kabobs beings flung at him. Going completely on reflex, Danny separated his torso from his legs and the deadly food sank into the concrete behind him, leaving cracks in the wall. While Danny pulled himself back together, an enraged Lunch Lady ghost let out a furious roar, and all the meat in the storage locker rose up. Even the meat Tucker was pulling off of Sam in chunks rose up off of her and swirled around the ghost in a storm. Sam and Tucker got closer to Danny until they were in arm’s reach, and the 20-foot behemoth of meat with green torches for eyes roared down at them.

“ _ Fuck no. _ ” Danny grabbed his friends and the chill of invisibility and intangibility rushed through them all again. Danny pulled and  _ snap _ the gravity tethering Danny and his friends to the Earth was undone. Danny flew through the wall to the outside, flying faster when he heard a loud crash.

“Thanks, Danny, Tuck.” Sam shot them both a big grateful smile. “You must be exhausted, ghost boy. Fighting in ghost mode, yanking us through walls. Holy shit, Danny you’re  _ flying!” _

“What gave ya that idea?” Danny yawned in the middle of that sentence but felt it was irrelevant. But then, everything went dark as they tumbled into a heap on the grass. And then it went silent.

* * *

Tucker and Sam stared at each other. For a handful of moments, neither was entirely sure what they should do. Sam could've died. Her best friends could have died. How was a teenager even meant to process that? She wanted to curl up on the ground and hide from everything in that moment, will all the nasty reality that was Ghosts away. But Tucker was bent over Danny, and Danny was out cold. So she packed away the emotions, cooled her shit, and bent down. "You get his legs, I'll take his shoulders. FentonWorks?"

They got him there. Danny's parents were downstairs, working on something. They got Danny on his bed, and Sam slumped against the door. Tucker and Danny skipped a detention essentially and all three have skipped school. So Tucker went down to erase the Fenton's voice mailbox and sent out a bug to his own. Sam had no clue why he had that ready but asked if he could do it with her folks' line. “Gimme a few mintes to work on that.” The silence passes, Tucker got on Danny's laptop. He always fled to the tech when he needed somewhere safe. Eventually, he asked. "You ok? Today went to shit."

"No, I don't think I am. I’m pretty sure she was going to crush me to death under all that meat that should’ve been stored in a far more sanitary manner. I’ve got bruises and meat juice all over me and I need a nap and a shower, not in that order.” Sam checked Danny's closet and found something she'd left there a couple of months back. "I'm gonna do that actually. Keep an eye on him?" Tucker grunted in acknowledgment. That was the best she'd get so Sam grabbed a spare towel from the dresser and headed to the shower.

When Sam got back she looked over Tucker's shoulder. Images of old ladies in familiar-looking uniforms were all over the screen. "Looking her up?"

"If we know more about her then we can talk it out with her right?" Tucker's fingers paused over the keyboard. He stretched, looking over at her. "Right?"

"Probably. Looking to work that Foley Charm on her?" Sam elbowed him lightly in the ribs. Tucker clutched his chest as though he'd been broken. Thank gods for that smile on his face. "Tell me you aren't planning to flirt with her. Danny might get jealous." Tucker snorted.

"I don't think Danny is into spontaneously combusting old ladies." Tucker went back to typing and clicking, screen light glaring off his lenses. "So, my theory is that ghosts draw on ambient energy to sustain themselves. When we went into that fight my phone was on like… 50 percent. When we got here it was at 17. So maybe we should carry batteries on us?"

"And our wrist rays." Sam was never letting herself be helpless like that again. "what've you got on her so far?"

"She said the menu hasn't changed in 50 years and she wasn't kidding. So I'm looking back at people employed by Casper back when she was alive, and hoping I can recognize her facial structure."

"Impressive." Sam sighed and looked over at Danny.

_ He zipped up his suit. Sam made a face at him and pulled off the logo of his dad's face. _ "You can't go around with this on your chest."  _ He agreed. If Danny ever met aliens of the extradimensional kind, he didn't want them to see his dad's face plastered on him. Danny walked into the tunnel of his parents' ghost portal, looking all around it. The whispers of those other worlds called out in his head again. As he walked deeper into the portal, Danny saw nothing wrong. Not a nut or bolt out of place. He got to the end. It was dark. Too dark to see anything. Turning back, he kept a hand on the wall to steady himself. His foot hit a raised panel, and Danny leaned to the left for support. There was a click. _

Danny opened his eyes and saw Sam looking down at him. Not unusual. The soreness in his muscles, however, was. Danny stopped mid-stretch and winced. "Oh. Right. 20-foot meat monster." Tucker was at his desk, turned around in the chair and giving him that frown he had when Dash had slammed Danny into a locker. "How long was I out for?"

"Four days." Tucker reached under Danny's bed and lifted up a bag of Nasty Burger.

"Four Days?!"

"Nah, like, 2 hours dude." Tuck chuckled and handed him a wrapped burger. "You need this dude, that fight took a shit ton outta you."

“Don’t I know it.” Danny unwrapped the burger and sank his teeth in. He'd been hungrier than he thought. It felt like a blink before the burger was gone. "Thanks, dude, I needed that. We basically skipped lunch, didn't we?" That thought had a horrible domino effect and Danny tore the burger wrapping in half. "Fuck, my parents are gonna kill me!"

"I erased the voicemail from your box, mine, and Sam's. Don't worry about that."

"Speaking of, how ya doin Sam?" Danny turned, looking his friend over and wincing at the bruises on her arms. “Fuck, the meat pile did that?”

“Yeah, turns out being grabbed up by a bunch of proceeded corpses can do some damage.” Sam shrugged. “It’s nothing I can’t fix with some concealer and sleeves.”

“It’s still warm though,” Danny said. “You good baking yourself?”

“The heaters in the school barely work, and it’s nearly October, Danny. Things have cooled down plenty.” Sam frowned and looked over to Tucker. “Do head injuries affect the perception of temperature?”

“I’m sure they can. If only someone hadn’t summoned up a meat-obsessed lunch lady with a menu change.” Tucker paused and raised a brow. “Actually, how in the  _ hell _ did you even get them to change it? Nevermind the why.”

“The why, Tucker, is that schools need to promote healthier changes in the food we consume.” Sam had that fire in her eyes. Again. Danny let out a long sigh, which went ignored by his bickering friends.

“And removing an entire food group from the menu was your solution?”

“It’s one we don’t even  _ need _ Tucker! Do you know how inefficient the transfer of calories from meat into our bodies is?”

“We need protein, Sam! If there’s anything that the Lunch Lady said truthfully it’s that! Look at Danny! He barely gets any protein, you can see how that’s turned out for him.”

“My dude, I’m not the only skinny person here.”

“Whether or not we have meat and protein isn’t your decision to make for us all, Sam!” Tucker glared balefully at the vegan and stood up from Danny’s chair. “You had to be an individual and have all your individual needs met over what anyone else wanted, didn’t you? No one but you even wanted this menu change!”

“The menu as it is now is far healthier for both us and the environment - and the ecosystems we tear down to sustain ourselves and animals that get butchered so people can enjoy the taste of their flesh don’t get a choice in what happens to them, so someone needs to make choices that help them out!” 

“Oh, oh, so  _ mud _ is healthier for me to eat than chicken? That’s fucking rich, Sam, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever fucking heard!” Tucker was now agitated enough to start ranting in Mandarin, which was great. “ _ Actually, no no, the most ridiculous thing is that we’re equating the right to a choice in what we eat to an animal’s right to chose anything. Are you insane?” _ Tucker opened the door so fast the knob banged against the wall. “ _ I’m gonna make sure this shit doesn’t last the week! _ ”

“We are no more innocent than those animals and their lives shouldn’t be put on the line for us needlessly! Don’t you think you can go undoing all my hard work!” Sam barged out as well, completely forgetting Danny as she slammed his door shut. Danny stared at that door for a moment before groaning into his pillow.

“This is going to be a whole thing, isn’t it?” For several moments, Danny laid there and stared up at the constellations he’d put up on his ceiling in glow in the dark stickers. His stomach reminded him of its existence, and Danny groaned again. He still had some allowance left, so he went out and headed to the Nasty Burger. Considering Tucker’s words and how much he’d done that day, Danny ordered a full meal.

After he’d eaten and walked it off on the way home, Danny let what had happened that day go through his mind. Even as he fought off a small angry blob with his wrist ray, growling at it. “Ghosts aren’t mindlessly violent beings. I know that.” He needed to believe that. “So, that means that she can be calmed, somehow. She kept going on and on about the benefits of meat, and she died years ago…” An email notification popped up on Danny’s computer, and he sighed. “Right, homework assigned by Lancer. What would I do without Tuck?”

The next day, Danny pulled on one of his darker shirts - a gift from Sam with some constellation’s accurately displayed - and some jeans. His parents didn’t come up to join him and Jazz that morning, which was likely for the best. Danny didn’t need their ghost radar pointing at him before he could figure out how to break their biases. The second his cereal was finished, though, Danny pulled out his journal and attached pencil. “No,” Danny snapped when he heard Jazz take a familiar breath. “It’s not a diary, no you may not read it. For the 11th time, Spazz.”  _ One weird benefit of super hearing - I can tell when she’s about to speak. _ Everyone had different rhythms for when they spoke and when they were thinking etcetera. Danny knew his sister’s patterns almost as well as Tucker and Sam’s.

Danny wrote into his journal a goal of recording his encounters with apparently sapient ghosts and how quickly he managed to pacify them. If only he could think of how to pacify this one.

Once the hybrid got to school - later than he would’ve been had those damned blobs not been so interested in fucking with him - Danny groaned as he was dragged to the Vice Principal’s office. There he found Tucker, who was glaring down at the desk in just the right angle to look like he was glaring directly ahead. A trick he’d developed for gathering valuable passwords while tricking Lancer and other authorities into thinking he was just a semi-rebellious teen. Danny couldn’t tell what Tucker could be trying to gather from the desk now, but he may have just been scowling. Tucker was complicated that way.

“Take a seat, Mr. Fenton.” Danny obeyed and took his seat, looking steadfastly at the space just behind Lancer’s head. “Tell me, gentlemen,  _ how and why _ did you leave my office when both of you were already being punished for starting a food fight in the cafeteria?” Before either could come up with an answer, Lancer slammed his hand down hard on the desk, and Danny flinched. “What could possibly have possessed you two to  _ skip school _ for the rest of the day?”

Danny squirmed a bit, while Tucker took even, obviously measured breaths. He then looked up at Lancer directly. “We were worried about Sam, sir. She hadn’t answered any of her texts, and she always answers even when we’re fighting to make sure we know she’s safe.” Not untrue, Sam wouldn’t have been able to answer a text if they tried that. Danny nodded along to Tucker’s story.

“We left out the window to find her, which took forever since she had gone to find a way to help organize something for the school.” Danny put on his most apologetic face. “We’re truly sorry about ditching you, Mr. Lancer, but we had to make sure our friend was safe, you see. We wanted to make sure none of the jocks or anyone had gone and done something horrible to her as revenge for getting the menu changed for a week.”

Lancer glared between the two of them for several seconds more, and Danny fought to keep himself still. “Fine,” Lancer finally allowed. “I will be following up with Ms. Manson to confirm all of this, but you won’t be receiving too harsh a punishment for looking out for your friend. For endangering yourselves by leaving through the window, however, and for leaving without simply telling me, you will be serving both lunch detention and after-school detention. Do you understand, boys?”

“Of course, Mr. Lancer.” It amazed Danny, at times, that he and Tucker could speak in unison. They were like twins.

“Dismissed. You two best not be late to my class.”

On the way to class, Danny brought up his thoughts on trying to appease the Lunch Lady. “Her name is Agatha,” Tuck said. “Agatha Reece. And maybe you could, I dunno, teach her about the health crisis in America? Help me organize the school to reform the menu the right way?”

“You want it changed too now? I thought you were gonna get it changed back early, or something?”

“Oh no, the food around here sucks either way.” Tucker rolled his eyes. “I just wish we had like, a better storage of better food in general. I could recommend my uncle and aunt’s farm for fresh, nearby food products.”

“If only we knew how Sam convinced the school to do this whole ‘veggie week’ thing.” Danny shook his head. “That’s what really doesn’t make sense to me. We’ve only been in school for like, a month or so. How the hell did Sam ‘wear them down’ so quickly?”

“No clue,” Tucker growled. For a moment the hair on Danny’s nape stood on end at the sound. “But, I’m going to make a petition, and head around the school getting signatures for a better permanent change decided on by the students.”

Danny patted Tucker’s shoulder and nodded somberly. “Leave some printer paper for the rest of us at least?”

Tucker raised his nose, Danny now straining to hold in the laughter in front of the door. “Sorry Danny, but a man on a mission has to go to all lengths to complete his quest.”

Danny bowed at the waist. “Of course, Friar Tuck, how could I possibly forget?”

“You are forgiven, peasant Daniel.” Tucker laughed and pulled Danny into the classroom. Things would be alright. Danny just needed to weather the storm and make sure both of his friends were still friends by the end of it.

It proved far more difficult a task done than said. The three had most classes together, but Tucker was busily writing  _ something _ down every few seconds in a second journal in his desk while he worked. Tuck had the most fascinating form of ambidextrousness. He barely paid any attention to Danny’s attempts to start a conversation and crumpled up any notes about Sam he slid over.

Similarly, Sam was ignoring him almost entirely. She took her notes, but every time she caught him whispering to Tucker, she glared and went cold on Danny himself.  _ Am I not allowed to talk to both of my friends? _

Lunch came around, Lancer had them eating in his room, and Danny had never been more grateful to Tucker’s mom than he had been when Tuck handed him an extra bagged lunch. “Tuck, you are the best.”

“I know it, dude.”

“Gentlemen! This is meant to be a time of quiet reflection upon your misdeeds.” Lancer glared at them until the teens went to silently eating, and Lancer went back to whatever he was doing on his computer. If Danny focused on the man’s headphones hard enough he could pick up the faint sound of… blasters? Weird.

At the end of the day, however, while the two were meant to be heading to detention, Tucker was going around and asking groups of friends who were lingering about something and holding up a clipboard that Danny was almost certain he stole from his dad’s office. Along with that pen. Never was Danny ever earlier than Tucker to something, but apparently, detention was one of those things. Sam, surprisingly, was also there.

“Lancer got you too?” Danny asked as he swept his growing pile of muddy grass a bit nearer to the goth

“I  _ was _ gone all day.” Sam shrugged, pushing the few remains of grass and mud into a pile and then grabbing a dustpan. “Plus I wanted to help clean it up anyway. We need this place to eat in after all.”

“Actually, I heard Jerry and Katelyn at least were eating on the theater stage.” The two scooped everything up into a trash bag with the dustpan. “They were inviting some other people to bring sandwiches and chips and stuff.”

“Oh wow,” Tucker called out from where Danny was very sure he shouldn’t have been able to hear them. “No one wanted to eat garbage right from the ground? I’m surprised, shocked even.”

“Had you actually been there to see, Tucker, there were plenty of people eating peacefully in the cafeteria today!” Sam looked downright murderous and stomped off to clean away from Tucker. Danny sighed a heavy sigh and shook his head.

The detention had gone on for an hour, but it’d felt like forever. Danny watched both his friends march off in different directions and groaned. Another friendless night for him. After a trip to the Nasty Burger, Danny did a little walk around the city. A few ghosts that he could see when the world lost focus skittered away from him or ignored him entirely. Some attacked, but his wrist ray had yet to run out of juice even though he forgot to charge it last night. “Maybe something to do with my other-self. Gonna have to ask mom and dad about that.” A shiver ran down Danny’s spine, a puff of mist coming out of his mouth and he looked around, letting his senses shift into that surreal state of his ghostly self. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Relaxing, Danny sighed and headed home.

"Danny!" His dad, Jack Fenton, only seemed to speak in exclamation marks. Danny wondered if he'd ever had an inside voice. "C' mon, dinner's ready son!"

Danny raised a brow. "Who cooked?" He'd eaten his Nasty Burger meal and was pretty sure he got all he needed.

"I did!" On the other hand, more food that wasn't infected with ectoplasmic residue sounded nice. Danny set down his bag and headed into the kitchen, where his dad had set out chicken, mashed potatoes, garlic bread, and spinach. His mom and sister were already sitting and eating, and Danny gave them both a wave. 

"Hi, Danny! Juice is in the fridge. Jazz reminded your father and I that we need to refresh our minds with some air now and then. I thought, why not a family dinner?" Mom shrugged as she picked up a chicken leg. "Jack insisted on cooking."

"Mom," Jazz said in her best calming voice, "Dad never mutates the food."

While Mom and Jazz debated who had the bigger mishaps with ectoplasm - Danny felt the Christmas turkey and Dad dragging them into a world of blinding perpetual light ranked as the biggest mishaps period - Danny grabbed himself a plate and fruit punch. Jazz clearly grabbed some groceries before telling their parents to surface. 

Halfway through his meal, a thought struck Danny. "Hey Dad, Mom? How does ectoplasm interact with electricity in its rawest most natural form? The ectoplasm, not the electricity."

Jazz stared at him in betrayal, _Why_ written in her expression. His parents, however, jumped on the thought of their son having an interest in their work. Danny had never seen his dad swallow food that fast.

"Ya see Danno, ectoplasm is naturally an energy thief. In relation to electromagnetic radiation, it soaks in any and all of it from the area with the exclusion of green visible light. That's why it feels so cold."

"If we can refine our engines properly we can utilize the flip side of that natural state," his mom added, "We could revolutionize energy efficiency in technology around the world!"

"It can store up a lot of power, but once it hits it's maximum?" Dad held his hands together then spread them out so fast he almost smacked Jazz and Danny. "It all comes out in an intense burn! Ectoplasm is either plasma hot or cold as space. When it's cold, it'd drain the power out of everything around it."

Danny nodded, letting the info process for a couple of moments while he ate. "So if, say, a ghost was to eat human food…?"

"Well," his mom twirled her fork around. "It likely wouldn't, but if it did the ghost would soak up all the energy that could be gotten out of the material in the food, leaving nothing but ashes."

Danny nodded, curiosity satisfied, and steered the conversation elsewhere. Once he was done clearing off his plate, Danny was struck with a realization. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time, when a thought lingered in his head, waiting to present itself. Usually, that was artistic inspiration. Now he knew exactly how to calm down Agatha. Up the stairs, he ran to his computer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My wonderful Beta Reader ReconstructWriter on Fanfiction.net made a point to me about how Sam should have an argument to match Tucker and Danny, and I agreed, so here ya go. Also, Danny didn't learn that he could fly until this chapter, if you didn't catch it.
> 
> Thoughts, Comments, Opinions, suggestions, or even if you just have fruit to offer, please leave em below


	3. Fight and Make Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teen fed up with Friends' Shit, Local Friends Having a Spat, Local Friends Fight a Ghost Instead of Each Other, Local Team of Youths Perform Exorcism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sup nerds? I've had a stressful week BUT i've managed to edit up this lovely little something for you. I hope you enjoy!

When Danny got to school, his friends were bickering, walking down the halls to their lockers stuck in a cyclical argument. “This school needs change and I’m going to make sure it happens!”

“Nobody wants this but you and your  _ vegans _ !”

“It’s healthier for you, better for wildlife and livestock and does less damage to the environment!”

“People literally  _ need _ meat products in order to live, what about them?”

“There are supplements that can stand in for meat without slaughtering innocent animals that have no choice in whether they get murdered to feed us!”

“Just like you’re giving us no choice in our alternatives?”

Danny couldn’t stand it anymore and got between them both. “Estrellas arriba, shut up! Go to class! No one wants to hear this screeching in the halls!” Tucker and Sam both stared at him wide-eyed and red-faced but Danny was already pushing Tucker away since Sam was usually immovable. “ _ I can’t believe you guys. You’re both so clever - how can someone so clever be so stupid? How do you spend a week arguing over a temporary change that’ll never take hold?” _ Sure, Danny’s angry ranting in Spanish may have been getting him stares but that’s what his hoodie was for and he was too annoyed to care. Once they were in class, Danny went quiet and pulled out his sketch pad to lose himself in drawing whatever first came to mind. Hydra, the largest constellation in the sky, soon decorated the page until class actually started.

As the day progressed Danny shot out an argument on both sides and pulled his friends away from each other when they started yelling, determined not to deal with their bullshit more than needed. By the end of the day he’d had to come up with several new star-based swears because regular cussing didn’t cut it anymore. “Gods, I can hardly get to lunch without a Denobola shouting contest! You two deal with this without me!” Heading outside to eat his packed lunch in peace, Danny took solace in his last period being one without his friends.  _ Who knew my least favorite class would be my only peaceful one? Those two better be done with this soon. _

A cow float, a stage, a ‘meat on a stick’ stand, kids in steak and hot dog costumes, a guy with a grill that couldn’t possibly be legal to just put on school property, and a sign that read “United we eat meat.” These were the first things Danny saw when he got to school. Then he looked over at the other side of the schoolyard. A replica of the Mystery Machine, the biggest fake sunflower he’d ever seen in his life, and yet another stage were set up with people that Danny could only identify as hippies surrounding that stage with picket signs with “It’s easy being green,” and “Tofu for you” written on them.

“Literally, how?” Danny groaned as his friends both approached him, looking furiously determined and holding megaphones. He could feel the cold burn of his eyes flashing brilliant green once they were both in front of him. “Seriously, how did you even get this done! I know there aren’t that many vegans here at the school who could’ve helped with this Sam, so how’d  _ you _ get it done?”

Sam rolled her eyes at him, arms crossed. “I paid some people to help us set up the stage on time, so what?”

“…How much money do your parents make that you ca-”

“So you’re a  _ capitalist?” _ Danny was  _ not _ going to punch his friend for interrupting him, that’d be counter-productive right now. Even if Tucker’s screeching in his ear nearly made that ear bleed. “You have the money and privilege to chose not to eat meat and you go and condemn the poor people who have to work their asses off to make ends meet and who literally need meat to live?”

“ **_Enough!”_ ** Danny put a hand over both of their mouths. “Sam: you’re right, eating meat is bad for animals cause they die. You’re also disregarding the struggles of the poor and forcing your choices on the rest of the school like your parents do to you and like they do to everyone else through money and political power. And  _ you _ .” Danny whirled around and pointed his finger in Tucker’s face. “This is going to ridiculous extremes. How did you even do this? Don’t answer that, I don’t wanna know. This is only a week-long change, you know that. Parents would’ve complained to the school about their kids being forced into someone else’s diets and the school would never do this again. More importantly!”

Shiver, mist. The sky darkened, the wind whipped up, and Danny swore he could hear cackling from everywhere. He looked over at the truck that Tucker had brought in and grabbed his best friend’s shoulder. “I’m going to punch you later for bringing a stars damned  _ meat truck _ when we’re fighting a ghost who’s obsessed with  _ meat _ .”

“That was my b,” Tucker admitted meekly. As the meat ripped out of the truck and flew through the air, Tucker and Sam slipped their wrist rays on and Danny ran to and slid under Tucker’s stage. The sound of something huge hitting the ground shook it, and Danny reached inside of himself. That humming ball of cold and void and out of reach stars, he plunged into it, and light washed over his body. The world changed, colors turning vivid and bright, strange colors he had no names for other than non-visible light raced into his eyes. The shadows were no longer black but silvery grey, the vast emptiness between molten starmetal and the blazing suns. Sounds and smells and sensations hit him that were all too alien to process. He reeled, nearly dropping the form. But he had something to do, he had a job to do.

Danny phased into the ground and popped up in front of the meat monster. It towered over him, so large Danny could barely see anything else. A check of his wrist showed that his ray was now pretty much melded into his hazmat. “Weird, question later, ass kick now.” 

Tucker was shouting at the rest of the students, his wristray aimed at Agatha but attention on the crowd. “MOVE, GET OUT OF HERE!” Sam grabbed onto Tucker to try and pull him out of the way of an oncoming meat fist but one of the vegans sprinting away knocked her into him and they both went flying onto the grass. A snarl on his lips, Danny charged forward. He lashed out with his foot to the… head, he supposed, of the meat, and it staggered backward away from the student body. She swung at him with a hand that moved faster than he’d anticipated, and Danny went flying. The world faded into unreality and he passed through what he vaguely knew were trees and the ground before stopping and righting himself. He flew under the ground, legs merging into a tail - also to freak out over later - and he zoomed. He emerged right under her and missed his uppercut as she stumbled backward from the rays that Sam and Tucker fired. Another fist grabbed him and Danny was slammed into the ground.

After a failed kick to the hand, Danny concentrated on his wrist ray and lined up the trigger that was sitting comfortably under his glove. Pull and - Agatha screamed from within her monster host, and Danny flew free. His ray was clearly bigger than the others, but he also felt drained. “Reserve for bigger fights.”

Danny weaved around her next few blows, kicking and punching the construct of processed meat backward away from the fleeing students and his friends. Flying in circles to orbit the monster, Danny picked up speed and slammed his foot into the head of the meat pile and it toppled to the ground.

Danny took a moment to breathe, glad to find he could if he didn’t think too hard about it. A fist came into view and Danny went soaring up and up and up. He saw a plane fast approaching and moved into that safe spot between the world and everything else. He passed through the plane like it was a thin cloud of smoke before managing to stop. Then he dove, turning solid again when Agatha was in sight from within her meat construction. “Not a lot of mass but anything with this kind of velocity should do the job.”

_ BOOM _

In the center of the crater, at least as deep as Danny was tall and twice as wide, a splatter of green pulled itself back together into a black and white-suited Danny Phantom, blue skin bruised a sickly purple-black where his cheek had impacted the ground. Picking himself up, the teen rolled his shoulder until it ached a bit less and saw Agatha there, staring at him. “Oh dearie, are you ok?”

“Surprisingly.” Danny rolled his neck. When he focused in on Agatha - he really could just see everything couldn’t he? - her face was warped and stretched larger than the rest of her.

“Tough! You being ok isn’t part of my balanced breakfast of death!”

Smaller chunks of meat came together into constructs about three-quarters of Danny’s size, five of them in total, and they grinned at him. This was when Sam and Tucker caught up with everything, apparently. Danny spun, heel tearing through the creatures like a knife, and landed to see Agatha being pushed back by Sam and Tuck’s wrist rays. “Fuck yeah!”

Danny’s celebration was cut short by his grasp on that deathly cold void slipping in the excitement, light washing over him with the warmth of being alive again. “This is inconvenient.” The meat monsters grabbed onto Danny’s limbs, reminding him that they were mere extensions of Agatha’s will. “This is even less convenient, how about no?”

As Danny was dragged through the air, something smacked him in the face. Catching it before it could fall out of reach, Danny felt a minor bloom of relief. “The Thermos! Maybe I can get it to work!” Seeing his family below, Danny hoped to all the stars in the sky that he was just going for a ride.

The ride stopped. Danny was dropped. A scream flew from his lungs, and Danny reached deeper, desperately grasping, to pull himself into the chill of the grave. The abyss met his call at the same time that his family looked up at the blur fast approaching. “Thanks for the thermos!” He shouted as he dove into the ground. Not waiting to see how that was handled he resurfaced to find Sam and Tucker bound in mounds of meat. “Work. Please work.” Danny aimed the thermos, poured his own  _ cold heat shadows  _ into the thing, and hit the button. A flash of blue light, a scream of defiance, and he capped the thermos. Gravity and heat washed over him again and Danny let out a sigh of relief, running over to pull Sam and Tucker out of the meat piles. “You guys ok?”

“I have meat and blood  _ everywhere _ and I was nearly crushed to death.” Sam shuddered, even as Danny phased everything off of her. “I am the very definition of not ok.”

“My nightmares are scarred for life after that. That was freaky. What do we do with her?” Tucker’s voice sounded more robotic than Danny liked, he’d have to do something to help him back to normal.

Before Danny could answer that he heard footsteps and turned the thermos invisible. As he thought, his parents thundered toward him with the Ghost Finder in hand. “Just missed em, guys.” Danny pointed behind him and was relieved when his mom and dad jogged off after a nonexistent ectosignature. “Well, that was a shitty start to the day. We should go inside before someone makes something out of the crater here.” Danny, Tucker, and Sam all headed off to the nearest entrance to the school, thoughts going south. “What if the security cameras caught all that?”

“Oh, no, that you don’t have to worry about,” Tucker said. “I’m all over that in like, a couple of hours tops.”

“Good.” Danny waited until they’d gotten to their lockers, and stuffed the thermos into his bag before punching Tucker in the arm. “ _ That _ is for bringing a stars damned meat truck when there was a food-obsessed ghost flying around!”

“Alright, yeah, that was stupid of me.” Tucker nodded. “I shouldn’t have done that. But uh, we all agreed not to do stuff that affects literally everyone without consulting each other?” Tucker and Danny both looked to Sam, who glared at them heatlessly.

The goth sighed and leaned heavily on Danny. “Alright, fine, ask people what they want first. Lesson learned. Can we talk about what we’re gonna do with Agatha though?”

“Well, I don’t think she’s a mindless monster or anything,” Danny started slowly as they walked toward their homeroom. “I think we can reason with her. Show her that change can be a good thing when it’s done right.”

“Alright, we can do that once we’re sure she’s not gonna try and kill us though, right? Tucker tried to go for a neutral, slightly teasing tone but Danny could hear - could feel a shakiness to him. “ _ We _ are meat if you didn’t notice Danny, and I don’t know if her control over food extends to a cannibal’s diet. I don’t wanna find out.”

“I’m horrified and grossed out,” Sam groaned. “I’m all for not getting cannibalized. That’s the wrong kind of macabre for me.”

Danny shook his head, made some crack about how bad either of them might taste, and promised to let Agatha cool down before releasing her. “Now, Sam, about how you’re using your money to muscle people around.” Danny groaned as loudly as he could and Tucker waved him off anyway. “No no, she’s an activist and all that shit, she knows how capitalism effects the working class and the attitude that people can just get by without animal products..” Danny pushed both of hs friends forward while this conversation happened. It was going to be a long day.

That cooldown time happened to be the amount of time it took for the veggie week thing to run its course and be done with. The school was cleaned, though all the vegan students who’d showed up for the rally were questioned about any kind of explosives they may have tried to sabotage the meat truck with and the news settled in on a gas line story. Saturday arrived, and the trio all met up in the park. Away from all the dog walkers, readers and normal people having fun outside, Danny Tucker and Sam stood in a small clearing of trees, a few chipmunks shifting around above their heads and in the bushes.

“Tuck, you got the reports?”

“Roger. Sam, got your wrist ray ready?”

“Of course. Danny, remind me to tell your parents they’re awesome for making most of their stuff solar powered.”

“They hadn’t figured out how to tap the afterlife for energy yet, it’s the most efficient thing we got.” Danny shrugged. He pulled out the thermos, which hummed beneath his fingers with the contained energy of Agatha inside. Sam and Tucker couldn't feel it, so he chalked that up to another ghost thing. “Alright, Agatha, if you’re ready to talk to us, I’m gonna let you out now.” The thermos offered no response. Danny opened it anyway.

The bark on the trees darkened, the leaves turning grey and the branches and bushes rustling as birds and squirrels left in a hurry. The air turned colder and sharper, and the sunlight dimmed as green spilled out of the thermos and stained the air. Agatha took shape quickly, though her glow was dimmer than it had been before. Her eyes raked across all three of them and narrowed. “Well, children? You kept rambling on and on about talking whenever I tried to get out. What’s so important that you didn’t put me back in the Ethereal Plane?”

Tucking the name of the other side in the back of his mind, Danny offered his best-placating smile. It disarmed most teachers back when he wasn’t having as many problems, he was hoping it’d work here too. “Agatha, hi. I’m Danny, this is Tucker and Sam. I feel like we got off on the worst foot before, what with you trying to kill us and all.” Tucker elbowed him in the ribs and Danny shoved him back. The buzzing in the air grew louder, his skin tingled, and some small part of his brain kept screaming to shoot, to run, to do anything that could get this thing that did not belong away from him. “So, I understand why you were angry.”

“You, Sam, changed the menu to just one food group!” Agatha’s voice was rising to those terrible echoes in the mind, and the tiny voice got louder. Still it was ignored.

“I understand now that it was probably a bad idea. No one’s been going to the line in the cafeteria all week except fellow vegans,” Sam grumbled. “Still though, some change needed to happen. The cafeteria wasn’t giving us any healthy foods!” Sam was a good actress when it came to her voice. She sounded unafraid, ready to argue for hours. Danny could feel something off though.

“And healthy diets aren’t exactly easy to come by if you don’t put a lot of effort into it nowadays.” Tucker held out a sheaf of papers. “This, Miss Reece, is a report on the various health crises around the country because of the food they’re feeding us.” The papers were taken and Tucker let out as subtle a breath as possible. “I don’t agree with changing the menu to just one food group, no one in their right mind would. But I think we should still change things up. Is there any way you can help us do that?”

There was a long beat of quiet, where all that Danny could hear was the sizzle of patties on a grill, the crunch of lettuce being pulled apart, the chopping of a knife on a cutting board the came with Agatha’s presence. It was in the background of everything unless he focused. It was still there though, and it was so distracting with everything else happening. Agatha read, frown deepening as she did before she handed the reports on obesity and diabetes increasing in children of their ages and lower back to Tucker. “Alright,” she started, then stopped. A superfluous breath. She looked to Danny. “Well, I suppose that I was a tad extreme about everything. How about this?” She held out her hand, and above her glove, the green light that seemed to shine in all directions from her coalesced into the form of a burger. “I’m not sure they’ll accept me in the school kitchens again but I’m certainly able to make a meal for everyone.”

“That’s amazing!” Tucker crowed. “I’ve already sent a few texts and set up some online polls to find out what most people actually want out of their lunch, maybe you can help us with finding ingredients around Amity? Do you have a food sense?”

“Even if they don’t let you into the school’s kitchen you could still probably find a soup kitchen that’d definitely let you in,” Sam offered. “If you can create food from basically nothing, then I see no reason for them to turn you away.”

“Plus, since ectoplasm draws energy from heat and electricity, you can probably just relax in the sun and be able to pull out a full course meal.” Danny took in his friends’ curious looks and scratched the back of his neck. “My parents are the world’s best ghost scientists. I just asked them.”

“I’ll certainly look into that soup kitchen idea dearies,” Agatha said with a bright smile on her face. “For now though, I should be getting back to the Astral Plane. Sunlight is a nice substitute but after all that fighting I need a quick break.”

“I can get you back there without my parents noticing,” Danny offered.

“I only need to be invisible for that, dear,” Agatha assured them and faded out of sight. The chill and fading of the clearing dissipated, and Tucker and Sam relaxed visibly.

“Well,” Danny said as he pulled his notebook out of his bag. “That’s one ghost down.” He hoped it wouldn’t be too many till he convinced his parents.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions? Comments? Souls either yours or otherwise? We here at Guardian Authorial Incorporated find your every word valuable as it feeds the soul of our centeral figure! Thank you, nad have a wonderful day! See ya next time!


	4. Existential Business Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny experiences some trippy feelings and has a bad time. Sam and Tucker talk things out a little like friends do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY THERE so I've finished this little ditty up and I do hope you enjoy the change.

Danny flew through the skies, soaring high above Amity Park. The wind stroked playful fingers through his hair and Danny laughed as he dove up into a cloud, dropping out of it a moment later. "Wet and cold, just like I knew it would be." Concentrating, Danny slipped into that space between the real and unreal. The world became even more vibrant and detailed than it was before, every color saturated with something more than it was. An  extreme indigo color that blanketed the second layer of reality like a contact lens. There were  colors and sounds that Danny couldn't even put a name to, but he knew they were beautiful and that he needed to find a way to put those onto paper.

The water droplets fell through his body, a weird feeling of being rinsed on the inside, and Danny shook his head, returning to the real world. "Does this count as real though? What's the difference between real and unreal? If I can walk through walls, disappear and fly then what if like, cryptids and stuff are real?" Danny snorted. "I need to bet with Tucker on who'll spot Mothman first. I can see everywhere at once though so probably me."

A few more minutes of flying, gliding on thermals that he should be too heavy to ride, and staring at birds, Danny flew back to his house. Turning invisible, Danny watched the world grow darker, that infinite void beyond the illusionary constructs of buildings that held true reality and something so much more. If only he could reach it.

Passing through the walls of his home, the shadows silvery and filled with ribbons of light that stretched in ways shapes couldn't bend filling his sight, Danny grabbed a few clothes from his closet and phased into his bathroom. Setting his clothes down, Danny focused in on the mirror, and gravity took hold again, dragging him back into the world of light and flesh and stone. He leaned forward, staring at his reflection. "Is that really me?"

His white-gloved hand came up to touch his sky blue skin. A green flush from the rush of flying faded away from his cheeks, while he pulled his glove off to touch his hair. It didn't feel right, too soft and flowy like he was underwater - and he could feel his hand as though his hair were just more skin. Now that he thought about it, Danny could see from his hairs too, the details on his palm blurred by proximity but the scar from the accident still crystal clear no matter how he was looking at it.

_ Click. The most damning sound he’d ever heard in his short life. A button, inside the machine. The whine of electricity he could always hear in the background crescendoed, the buzzing raising his hair. Green light flooded the tunnel and Danny ran, ran to the edge where he’d be safe. But he was too late. _

A flash of light and the world righted itself around him, gravity anchoring Danny firmly to the ground and his scars faint and hard to notice instead of glowing bright electric green. Everything was right except him, his eyes that glowed with that inhuman light in the dark. Reaching up Danny turned on the light. He held onto the counter for dear life, whatever bits and pieces he had left of it, and glared at his reflection. Skin tanned from time in the sun with Sam on her nature walks, that scar on his cheek from when Tucker dared him to climb the backyard tree high as he could when he was 8. Blue eyes, black hair, the nasa jacket that Jazz got him for his birthday- it all looked right. But it still wasn't, was it?

Getting undressed and getting in the shower, Danny willed the hot water to wash away his problem too. And for the hundredth time, it didn't listen.

"Ghosts aren't monsters, and I'm not a ghost. Ghosts aren't monsters and I'm not a ghost." Watching the water run over him and even some dripping right through him, Danny hugged himself and let his tears get lost in the spray. “Ghosts aren’t monsters, I’m not a ghost. Does that make me a monster? Am I a ghost? Didn’t I die?”

Danny scrubbed until his skin felt raw, pausing when he reached for his towel. For a moment, his arm was translucent, water falling through him like he wasn’t there. When it turned solid, the arm was dry as a desert. The light flickered, and Danny toweled off furiously.

Danny redressed and bolted for his room, grabbing up his notebook and flipping through the pages. He needed something to focus on, he was riding high on that hyperfocusing for days before reality crashed in on him. “Ectoplasm is an energy thief, cold as the abyss or hot as the sun depending on energy levels. Can see in the dark for 60 feet, can see infrared light if pressed, also absorbent thereof.” Science, facts, things he knew about his condition thanks to experiments with Sam and Tuck. These were important things, they were his real now.

“Ultraviolet light appears as a weird color that’s got no name in human language and naming it is meaningless due to the lack of relative meaning. Therefore I have named the color blurple, though if I concentrate harder and let myself drift further into it, I can see more colors that fit in the blurple range, such as Blae, Torqua, and Grack.” Sam thought those were the dumbest names he could think of, so Danny needed dumber ones.

“Upon drifting off and transforming into my ghost form, I can see creatures and entities that skitter around, moving around everyone and thing that isn’t ectoshielded in the house. Sam has spiders made of flowers following her all the time, and Tucker has a wolf constructed from floppy disks and electron cannons and other old computer parts always wandering near him. I can hear and even sorta feel an odd sort of radiance surrounding people and plants and even inanimate objects that paints them in green shades when in ghost mode.”

Snapping the notebook shut and tossing it to the side, Danny pulled on his hair. This wasn’t working. “I need normal. I need something totally average and human to do.”

Scrambling to his desk, Danny pulled out his sketchbook, grabbed his pencils, and remembered that beautiful panoramic scene of the sky above Amity. The scratch of his pencil against the paper filled the silence and Danny let himself get lost in the sky he was putting to paper. Art was good. Art was safe. “I should make a new compound so I can draw in Blurple.” Art gave him ideas. This was ok.

* * *

“As you can clearly see, Sam, my aunt and uncle treat these animals with the utmost care and keep them well-fed and healthy.” Tucker finished up the impromptu tour with a flourish. “All the rest of the family that helps maintain the farm do too. This is an animal-friendly place and if you wanna help out the school then you can use your connections to help with us becoming a supplier of their food. That way we know it’s healthy.”

“Yeah, that and the investigation going into the school’s method of storing their food.” Sam shuddered, flipping through the sheets on her clipboard. The three of them had come together to decide on the minimums of what she’d be ok with for any kind of animal-based farm. Sam still hated the very idea of it but Danny was right about one thing.  _ I can’t actually stop people from eating meat so I might as well try to make the most of the situation _ .  _ The Foleys have every box ticked and they treat the animals more like pets than food. _ “The school needs better storage. I’ll see if I can convince my grandma to donate the funds.”

Tucker sat down on a couch in the living room and Sam joined him, taking in the pictures of his parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and more all over the walls. Directly across from them was a TV mounted on a stand with several drawers, a few of which were open and had DVD boxes sticking out of them. Tucker interrupted her taking everything in with bewilderment in his voice. “I’m still reeling over the fact that you’re, what, a cotton candy heiress?” 

“The thing people put the cotton candy on, but yeah. After that, it expanded into other foods and it’s gotten to the point where my grandma currently controls… 40% of the food products in America?” Sam shrugged. “Somewhere around that much.”

“Gods, ok, that’s ridiculous.” Tucker laughed and shook his head. “Sam with that much cash, you could probably just wave around a fifth of your allowance and everyone’d be buddy buddy with you. Why hang out with a geek and a freak like Danny and me?”

“Would any of those popular idiots be friends with me without the money?” Sam scoffed, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. “Of course not. You guys, on the other hand, actually like me for me. That’s a lot more valuable than something as shallow as popularity. Plus having everyone know you for being rich is overrated.” Memories of events that her parents had dragged her to where all the dull adults had only known her as the Manson girl dragged themselves to the surface and Sam stamped them all down. “Besides, you and Danny know how to have fun, even if you don’t know how to play videogames.”

“I’ll have you know I can play videogames  _ amazingly, _ thank you. You’re just ridiculously good at them.” Tucker bapped her with a throw pillow and Sam grinned, grabbing one herself. “Sam,  _ no! _ ” It was, of course, too late for that. The ensuing pillow fight was glorious if brief, and Sam was the victor as was right.

“Now that my victory has been established once again, what were you saying, Friar Tuck?” Sam sat firmly on Tucker’s back, and he was laid out on the floor.

“Lord Chaos reigns supreme yet again… for now.” Tucker rolled over and huffed a laugh. “Speaking of reigning supreme.”

Sam rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “I’m not using my money to take supreme control of the school, Tucker.”

“Not what I was gonna say but that’s a  _ wonderful idea _ !” They both got a laugh out of Tucker’s best Flowey impersonation. “I was gonna say why not roll out environmentally safe products to out-compete the nature hurting assholes? Most things that work with nature are more efficient for it and if you sell at reasonable costs it all works out great.”

Sam tossed that idea around in her head for a long moment, and it took root near immediately. “Tucker, how do you feel about designing a solar-powered electric car?”

“Do I get royalties and compensation for making it?”

Sam scoffed. “Of course, who do you think I am?”

“Well then I guess you just made your first big business venture, Sam. I can research all the best materials for a cost-effective model and get to work building it virtually.” Tucker already had his PDA out and Sam grinned, flipping his hat around.

_ This is gonna be great. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Opinions? Constructive Criticisms? Veggies to placate the vegan?


	5. Ghosts and Beasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ex Choir Kid Beats up Ex Chorus Kids, It Isn't the Swimsuit Edition, Teen Tries to Angst Rudely in front of Rude Friends, Worrying Changes Happening With Your Body and Mind are Completely (un)Natural, Robot Attacks Teens in Zoo

Danny didn’t have anything against chorus kids, heck he was one in middle school, but this was downright ridiculous. He and Tucker had been in the lab, working on actually building the hoverboard that they had planned on building before The Accident. Danny had the Gravity Inverter™ already built, and they had just decided on modelling it after surf boards instead of skateboards. “It offers more room to maneuver, and between Sam, Jazz, and Mom last summer, I’ve gotten pretty good at surfing.”

“I am a wonderful teacher, yes. And in return for those lessons, your parents agreed to help me with converting your lawn from grass to moss." Sam smirked from where she was doing… something on her laptop - the newest brandname laptop that made Tucker drool even though he could almost certainly build a better one. 

"I know I'm going to regret asking this but: Why?" A glance up showed that Tucker had the soldering iron in the air just over the circuitry of the board and was staring at Sam. Danny contemplated telling Tucker to put on gloves or let him realize his mistake as the heat got to him.

"Because moss is a much better oxygenator, it doesn't grow tall enough that any mowing need be done, it can grow easily in the low nutrient soil most yards have, and it looks cool as hell." Sam paused in her typing and Danny and Tucker blinked slowly at her. “I helped with turning the grass in my lawn to moss.”

“So, like, are you gonna just do our lawn or are you gonna convince the school to do it or something? Maybe a botony club?”

“That sounds like a great idea, Danny! But I’ve got other ideas for now.” Sam grinned, looking at Tucker, who still hadn’t noticed his own lack of gloves. Danny was getting worried about nerve damage now. “How’s the car design going?”

“I’ve been working on it, and I was actually gonna have Danny take a look after we’re done with this. Still, I think it should be pretty easy to do with the right resources. Still, I think we need to develop better transparent solar panels for it to work.” Danny reached for another tool, opening his mouth to mention that his family already had those developed and capable of 50% efficiency, and instead groaned when his lungs went icy cold. Turning to the portal, Danny picked up a new Fenton Rifle™ and took aim. The air near the portal rippled and flashed with green sparks which tore the air asunder into a swirling pane of light. Twelve ghosts, all singing off key and out of harmony, flew from the portal, and it snapped closed as soon as the last pair were out. Quickly fed up with the noise they were making, Tucker took aim with his Wrist Ray ™ and demanded “QUIET!”

One of the ghosts took exception to that and talons dragged across Tucker’s back, flinging him onto the floor. Danny snarled and pulled the trigger on the rifle, striking one of the ghosts hard in the chest and burning a hole deep enough that Danny could see a pulsating ball of toxic green. The ghost stared at him, shocked, and melted into a puddle on the ground. Before Danny could swing the rifle around to take out the rest, a claw slammed into his arm and sent him tumbling into the table. The ghosts evacuated the lab, fleeing the angry teen and his gun while Tucker slowly stood up. Danny rushed over, hand hovering an inch from Tucker. “Are you ok? That looked like it hurt. It also looks like it’s bleeding.”

“Yeah, it hurt plenty. Is it deep?”

“No, I think the bleeding is just immediate bu-”

“Sam, can you get the first aid kit? We can bandage this right?” Tucker tugged on his sweater and Danny phased it off for him. “You go, we’ll catch up.”

Danny took a deep breath and concentrated, filled and surrounded by void faster than ever before and rising off the ground. “Call me, I’ll text you where I am when you can catch up.” And off he flew, immaterial and weightless, the world unfolding until all he could see was the brilliant viridian streaked void and those idiots who thought they could get away with hurting  _ his _ best friend. The first one he caught up to dodged his rifle fire, another coming up and slamming a brick into his head. Danny whipped around with a growl and shot that one in the center, not watching as it crumbled into a pile of goo. “ _ You’re next!” _

Tucker and Sam skateboarded their way to him around halfway through the ghosts, using the thermos to catch them instead of letting Danny tear them apart. Something he was surely going to appreciate when he wasn’t as furious as he was right now. Unfortunately, upon getting the last pair near a warehouse on the docks of the river, the Trio found yet another rip in the air, an odd shifting thing that refused to stay as one shape for Tucker and Sam to see. Helpfully, Danny supplied, “It’s a tesseract. That’s fucking amazing to see, it’s so cool.”

And because Danny had the sheer gall to be impressed by geometry the universe punished his nerdiness by shoving a ghost out of the portal, ethereal form twisting between sizes and shapes before cubic chunks of green settled as a blue skinned man in denim overalls. Bright red eyes blinked out at the teens and they sighed. Sam nearly had time to say hi when the ghost lifted his hands over his head, wiggling his fingers and shouted at them. “BEWARE!”

“Ok,” Tucker said as he fired his ectopistol at the ghost, blasting him back a bit. Tucker stumbled onto his face when a glowing box smacked him in the back of the head and groaned. “This is stupid.” Sam fired her own wrist ray and it knocked boxy right into Danny’s line of fire while another box hit her legs and tripped her up.

Danny pressed the barrel of his rifle against the Box ghost’s chest, focusing his anger into the gun and pulled the trigger. “ **_B E W A R E_ ** .” Hot ectoplasma tore through the Box Ghost’s chest and burned a hole on the wall behind him. Danny flew down to his friends to check on them, and sucked on his teeth when he saw the way they were looking at him. “What?”

“Danny, I dunno how you did that to your voice, but when Halloween comes around you need to be able to do it again.” Tucker let Sam help him up and pulled out the thermos, aiming it at the mess on the walls. “Seal for delivery.” The green goop flew toward the thermos and soon was gone. Danny dropped to the ground and flipped onto his back.

“Seal, aquatic mammal in the arctic. It uh, barks?” Danny looked hopeful. Sam looked less so.

“Sorry brain boy, that is yet another wrong answer.”

“Hey, I’m an Astrophysist, mechanical engineer and artist, not a biologist.” Danny grumbled. “Speaking of biology, how you doin Tuck?”

Tucker spun the Fenton Thermos ™ on his finger like a basketball. “I’m feelin a bit sore still but I’ll be way better once we all get home. There’s still an hour before curfew and that’s all we need to study, right?” Danny offered a thumbs up and Sam shrugged. 

Then the thermos fell from Tucker’s finger right on the release button and all their hard work filled the warehouse before getting away again. 

“Tucker.”

“Yes, Sam?”

“When you’re feeling better I’m going to hurt you.”

“Right.”

Considering it took them over two and a half hours to find and catch a third of the ghosts released by Tuck's blunder, everyone got home at around midnight, leaving no study time for Danny. The Box Ghost, apparently, was stronger than they expected, because he was fully formed as soon as the ectoplasm left the thermos. Running a highly demanding brain and body on only five hours of sleep was Not a fun endeavor. Danny inhaled his breakfast, and if an upward glance was anything to go by spiked the electric bill with his secondary eating.

Jazz decided to be gratingly cheery anyway, like she always was. “Mom! I just got the news from  Genius magazine!” Jazz was holding up a cover of said magazine and Danny rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna be on the cover!”

“Genius Magazine?” Dad grabbed up the magazine and stared at it for a moment before a low and potentially upset tone carried out, “is it the swimsuit issue?”

“Dad,  _ please _ ,” Jazz rolled her eyes and narrowed them. “this magazine is for, by and about women geniuses!”

“Firstly,” Danny said, holding up his spoon. “Is Dr. Saturday in it?”

“…No.”

“Then they missed a genius.” Danny felt his face twist up. “Secondly, I’m trying to eat and you bring up Mom being in the swimsuit issue of a falsely named magazine?”

Jazz ripped the magazine from Dad’s hand and groaned in frustration, her page flipping now the slamming of book covers. “I signed Mom up so that the world can see that she’s a genius and not a ghost hunting freak!” Danny winced, rubbing his neck. Sounded like Jazz heard as much of it as he did. Unsurprising, kids were assholes.

“They’re not ghost hunting freaks,” Danny said with only a touch of offense in his tone. “They’re Ectologists, contracted regularly by the government. They’re also  _ right _ about ghosts being real.” Jazz opened her mouth to challenge that claim but even groggy and under fueled Danny’s brain was quick. “Just check the back of the school for proof.” Quick but filterless.

“Well sweetie,” Mom said before Jazz could counter that it was a gas explosion like Tucker had fed to the school, “if I’m going to be on a cover - which you should  _ ask me for permission for _ before you go doing it - then I want Jack right there with me.” Mom pulled Dad’s bulk to her, impossibly, in a hug. “We’re a team after all!”

The man in question beamed and pulled out… something. Danny didn’t have the brain power to analyze tech at the moment. “That’s right! Together we built the Ghost Gabber™! It translates the odd noises that a ghost makes, dissonant whispering sounds and all, into language that you and I can understand!”

“In what language?” Danny frowned. “If you’re gonna sell this - which please don’t this is ridiculous - then it should be in like, all languages you’re gonna sell to right?”

“Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic so far,” Mom supplied. Danny nodded and slurped down the last of the milk in his bowl. “It’ll work for any language when it’s done!”

Danny stared at the thing and narrowed his eyes. “Boo.”

“I am a ghost,” the thing rattled off back to him. Which, well, fuck.  _ That’s what I was thinking at least. _

“It’s busted, responded to human speech. Or you guys have  _ the worst _ humor and that’s preprogrammed.” Danny grabbed his lunch and headed to the door. “Love you byyye!”

School was as mind numbing as ever, the damage from the ‘gas explosion’ doing nothing to stop classes apparently. Which meant that Falluca's test on biology was still a go. Yay. Brain sluggish from last night's hunting and lacking on biology knowledge to begin with, Danny was unsurprised yet pissy when he was handed back a D.

Taking their lunches into the library, the Trio ate quickly, everyone still feeling yesterday's activities. Soon as he was out of food to shovel in his mouth Danny was glaring at his test again. "I can't have a D on a test! I’m a Fenton!”

“The American Public education system is a relic and fails to accurately quantify intelligence.” Danny stared blankly at Tucker, who shrugged. “Sam’s activism rubs off when she’s right.”

“If I come home with a D my mom’s gonna put me through martial arts training and have Dad give me lessons on whatever it is I failed on.” Danny waved his paper aggressively. “My Dad teaching me  _ biology _ guys, it’s horrible!”

“Well since you need to boost that grade I have an extra credit idea for you,” Sam said at one of the computers. Danny turned to look at her screen and furrowed his brow.

“A purple backed gorilla? Why is it’s back purple? That’s not a naturally occurring pigment in mammals.” Danny turned to Tucker. “Right?”

“While I’m the last person you should defer to for knowledge on organic coding, you’re right. I can only think of birds and uh butterflies? Those can be purple. Rarely though.”

“Extremely rare, only two males left. Which is why you’re going to write a report studying it on why it deserves to be set free!” Sam beamed at him with that smile she used when she wanted something out of him. The air around her shimmered with impressions of green and purple, like a mist that clung just above her skin. It didn’t seem to be hurting her, so Danny didn’t bother mentioning it beyond pulling out his journal to take a note in.

“I don’t have time for extra credit, or your agendas, Sam.” Danny groaned. “Gotta find those extra ghosts before they manage to hurt someone.”

“Actually,” Tucker cut in, holding up his PDA. “You do have time. You just need to manage it better. Which is why I’ve elected myself to be your time manager. Least I can do after Sam let all those ghosts out.” Sam glared, that meowing turning to a low growl, and Danny tugged on his jacket.

“I dunno…” Could Tucker be trusted to manage even his own time, let alone Danny’s?

“It’ll be my job to manage your schedule so that you can do your schoolwork  _ and _ catch that Box Ghost dumbass that Sam let out.”

“You  _ do _ remember that I can turn outrun you right?” Sam’s glare intensified, and Tucker swallowed. “I can kick your ass faster than you can move it, Foley.”

“Remember what happened when I let you manage the thermos, Tucker?” Danny arched a brow, crossing his arms.

“I’ve already set a reminder,” the geek held up his PDA which flashed with bright green letters. “Don’t let Tucker handle the Thermos.”

“What the hell?” Danny sighed. “I guess we can do a trial run.”

“Sweet! I’ve also scheduled some time for us to go check out that gorilla once classes are over.”

“Before I even said yes to doing a report on it, yay. Aren’t you just the best?” Danny jabbed Tucker lightly in the arm and frowned when Tucker winced. “How’s the shoulder?”

Tucker shrugged. “It’s getting better. Told Mom I fell off my skateboard trying to do a trick and she helped me change my bandages. It should be fine in a couple days.”

Danny sighed, pulling his hood over his head. “I shouldn’t have opened that portal. Then you guys wouldn’t have gotten hurt like this.” Danny zipped up his hoodie, shivering. “Stars guys, I’m  _ so sorry _ .”

“Said the guy who I pressured into the portal,” Sam countered.

“To the guy who coulda said enough is enough and stopped you,” Tucker added, ruining Danny’s angsty bad times. He had negativity to feel dangit!

“You guys are dumb.” Danny pulled the two into a tight hug. “Thanks. I dunno what I’d do without you.”

“Probably finish dying, let’s be real.” Tucker earned the punch he got from Sam, he really did.

The bell rang, and the Trio sighed. “Well shit. Time to go back and do all that school stuff.” Danny pulled away and grabbed up his bag. It was one of the few classes he had without Sam and Tuck next. “See you guys later.” A few goodbyes later and everyone left to zone out in class and contemplate what that day in the lab had really meant for them.

While Sam was taking in all the key points of the lesson, she was also noting that she knew this part of history like the back of her hand. The majority of Sam’s attention was on a comment the blond meathead had made. Just as they got to class, Dash had shoved Danny into some lockers, and when Sam told him off for it he called her a witch girl for hanging out with the ghost freak. As much it made Sam want to castrate the idiot with a heated rusty knife, it also made her think. If ghosts were real - something she tried not to think too hard about because the realization of how big that was felt like too much to even begin processing - then why not magick? Tucking away the mental note to do some research on magick later, Sam let her mind wander through all the different things she could probably do for the world with magick.

Once Sam found Tucker and Danny at the exit, she draped her arms over both boys’ shoulders and kept walking. They caught up to pace quickly enough. “So, the zoo first or looking for Ghostly Chorus first?”

“Ghosts first,” Danny said after a few minutes of contemplation. “If we catch em right away we can get to the zoo and spend more time fully focused on it.” It took them a trip home each to grab their scooters, then two hours of searching four different neighborhoods before the group actually found the four remaining Choir Ghosts. Danny felt a deep rage fill the core of his being when he saw them,  _ the fools that dared to hurt his friends _ and took aim with his rifle to announce that he’d found them. A pulled trigger and there were only three ghosts left. One of the ghosts turned to fly at him, swiping a claw that grazed his cheek and knocked him back in the air. Tucker fired off a shot, missing both the chorus ghost and Danny by just an inch, and being knocked tumbling off his skateboard for his trouble. “ **You’re going to regret that** _. _ ”

Sam landed a shot on the ghost that knocked Tucker off his board and did a kick flip to avoid one trying to get the drop on her. The ghosts prioritized Danny as the biggest threat, two of them swinging at him from either side. Danny raised his weapons on either side and was knocked down by the third one into Tucker. A growl built itself up from Danny’s chest and he turned both his rifle and wrist ray to the sky. One of the ghosts dodged the wrist ray, knocking the other into the path of the rifle shot. Sam took out the one that had dodged Danny just before the last one appeared in front of her. It dove under the ground and Sam saw green as Tucker’s wrist ray rammed into her shoulder. “SAM!”

Tucker rushed over to Sam and Danny _zoomed_ through the air, driving his fist through the ghost’s chest and grabbing onto that ball of emerald light. He snarled in it’s face. “ ** _Should’ve let him take you out. It would’ve been less painful_**.” The ghost tried to get away, but Danny held firm and squeezed harder and harder until the ball of power, of _connection of self of discordant songs and burning wood_ **cracked** in his hand and ectoplasm dissolved into a pile of goop on the asphalt.

Turning back to Sam and Tucker, Danny was greeted by horrified faces on his best friends in the world, and immediately lowered himself to the ground. The void left him, an empty space in his chest as Danny ran over to Sam and Tucker, kneeling to check Sam’s shoulder. “Are you ok?”

Sam took a long moment befor eshe seemed to even hear what he’d said. “I mean I uh I might need some burn cream and my shoulder isn’t exactly having the best night ever, but I’ll be fine. It doesn’t exactly hurt as much as it probably hurt the ghosts.”

“Y-yeah, that’s probably it.” Tucker helped her to her feet and dusted himself off. “Everybody still feeling up for the zoo? We gotta grab that extra credit.”

Danny stared down at his hand, flexing his fingers and shuddering at the icy chill around them. He’d taken out minor ghosts before, sure, but never as brutally as he did that one and the Box Ghost.  _ What happened to me? _ “Alright. The zoo.” Danny slid back into the void, easier at night when he had the stars to look up to and reach for, and rose up off the ground while Tucker and Sam grabbed their boards. And as they headed to the Zoo, Danny couldn’t help but think to himself.  _ I wouldn’t do that to a person, would I? All I had to do was catch it in the thermos and it’d have been dealt with. Stars. _ Danny shook his head, trying to force himself away from thoughts of what kind of horror he’d’ve seen on Tucker and Sam’s faces if that had been a human who’d taken a swing at them.

Sam looked out from the observation deck binoculars at Sampson, taking her turn on gorilla watch. “He’s so beautiful, so intelligent, so majestic!” Watching the gorilla pace in his cage Sam was sure he would be infinitely happier in the wild.

“What we’ve learned thus far, Sam is that gorillas like to scratch their butts.” Danny yawned, turning to Tucker. “How long have we taken to learn that?”

“Five hours.” Tucker yawned, sitting on the floor.

“Time flies when you’re majestically scratching your butt.”

“C’mon guys, we could learn something about Sampson no one else has!” A thought occurred and Sam turned to Danny. “You should try commun- oh. Wow.” The boys were on the floor, both clearly conked out from the lack of sleep last night. And Danny rolled over to cuddle Tucker in his sleep, which Sam felt was sickeningly cute. “Fine, I’ll do it myself… in the meantime…” Sam took a picture of the boys, chuckling. “To the scrapbook it goes for when these idiots finally get a clue.”

By the time she got to the gorilla enclosure, she heard a loud roar from elsewhere in the zoo. Presuming it was just a tiger or two waking up, Sam looked into the cage to see Sampson pulling on the bars of the door to his cage. “You poor creature, stuck in here when you should be in the jungle.” Sampson saw Sam standing there and pulled even harder on the door, howling at her and staring desperately. “…You want out?”

Sam decided to use her own Dumbass Teenager Action of the month and blame it on her own sleep deprivation. She also blamed it on the control panel having an easy to get to, easy to use  Open Cage button. If she could get away with it, she was going to have a talk with whoever ran security.

Sampson practically flew out of his cage and Sam followed after him. She stopped, shock freezing her muscles up as Sampson tackled to the ground a… “Is that a fucking robot?”

The man made of steel and wearing black leather and a shoulder pad kicked Sampson off and Sam found herself caught between rolling her eyes at the Mohawk and goatee made of green fire and backing away from the glowing ghost robot.

Sampson charged again immediately after being thrown, knocking the robot to the ground and rolling onto his back. Sam felt herself laugh as the robot was tossed around by Sampson’s feet but it all felt so unreal.  _ Is this what my life has come to? _

Sampson was blinded by goo and Sam felt it time to act. She raised her Wrist Ray™ and fired, narrowly missing the ghost robot, who glared in her direction and fired off a shot of his own. It caught her in the gut, sending Sam backward and the ghost snorted. “Damn wench. You and this gorilla pest are in my way. Thought I’d gotten the last one with me.” Speaking of, Sampson got the gunk out of his eyes and charged the hunter again, though the ghost dodged out of the way, phasing through a backhanded swing.

“So  _ you’re _ the one who went around poaching the furs of purple-backed gorillas? This is  _ your fault? _ ” Sam felt her blood boil and fired off another shot with her wrist ray, cracking the shoulder pad of the armor. “They’re going to go extinct because of you!”

“All the more reason to get the last ones in my home. Unfortunately, you can put several bullets into something and it can still eat you before it realizes it’s supposed to be dead.” The robot looked down at his shoulder, which gave off little sparks, and he turned to Sam, raising his arm cannon. “Let’s see how well you can replicate that, shall we?”

Before the ghost could fire his cannon at Sam, Sampson grabbed him up from behind and tossed the ghost hard. Sam recognized that she wasn’t going to be able to handle this one on her own, and ran to the observation deck to get to Danny and Tucker. “GUYS, GUYS WAKE UP!” She grabbed onto the ladder and started climbing when an explosion rocked the tower and she nearly lost her grip. The town began to lean and Sam heard herself screaming before she even felt it. The tower began to tilt her way and Sam looked down to see a hole blown in the base of the tower.

Danny heard screaming, but it was far away and likely unimportant and he had dreams to have, stars to see and  _ hear and cradle in his hands and wrap his entire self within and around. There was so much for them to show him, so much to give him and all he need do is reach out and _ \- the ground shook, thunder booming in his sensitive ears and Danny clung tighter to Tucker for a moment, his eyes flying open. “TUCK Tucker wake up!” Danny shook his friend and reached for that silvery darkness that filled him and wove around him. “Fuck fuck fuck, ok, I have an idea, get up, be ready!”

Danny flew through the glass - either physically or intangibly he didn’t know right now - and turned to look at the tower. There was… a hole in it. And Sam was on the tower, screaming. And they  _ needed _ him. “It worked for Agatha, it can work for me.” Danny held out his hands and closed his eyes. He searched within, reaching deeper and deeper for that light, the wispy shadows that surrounded the world and held it in place around her star and kept the universe from falling apart. He reached and reached and  _ shadows, whips of darkness even he could not fully see were grasped and pulled out of him. His eyes opened, and Danny wrapped his very self around the tower, gravity’s hold snatched away but for the longest of seconds. The tower no longer fell for there was no down for it to fall into, merely the void for it to rest within. Nothing, less than nothing, empty space filled the spaces between everything and all was still. _

**_And then he c r a c k e d_ ** .

Tucker caught Danny and Sam looked around the zoo in awe and horror. Sampson had been blasted back into his cage, the tower was on its side, and Danny looked like he was fading fast. “Tucker, the thermos!” He pulled it out of his backpack and handed it to Sam. She looked inside and saw the sloshing ectoplasm they’d cleaned off the streets when they tore up the ghosts earlier. She grabbed onto Danny and held his mouth open, pouring the ectoplasm even as his form flickered between ghost and human.

“Sam, what the hell?” Sam realized her hand was shaking when she saw the green fluid drip down the sides of Danny’s face and Tucker grabbed the thermos to steady it. Danny drank down the ectoplasm and his body stabilized in ghost form. Once the thermos was empty, Tucker set it down and they watched as Danny glitched between forms one last time before his back arched and those blindingly bright rings appeared, transforming him back into Danny Fenton. “What the fuck happened?”

“A ghost robot appeared and tried to kill us.” Sam stood up and grabbed her board. “Who’s carrying Danny?”

“My hands are steady so I think that’s gonna be me. Think you can carry my board? I don’t wanna try that while I’ve got him on my back.” Tucker maneuvered Danny onto his back with arms looped around his shoulders, and stood up slowly and carefully. Sam grabbed his board and they headed for the exit together and from there to Fenton Works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions? Comments? Thoughts? ConCrit? Weapons with which to deal with robots?


	6. Interview and Videogame Violence

_ Voices, vaguely familiar and carrying warmth called out to him. They called his name, the sound  _ _ distant and irrelevant, so small it is lost to the hearts of stars singing deep beneath the soil. Lost to the blooming nebulas staining the dark sky with color, miles upon miles of light and rivers of fire and the promise of something new. Danny can almost hear the words and language they speak; something so close, so distant, something he has never known -- but they ring with such magnificent, terrible truth that he thinks, maybe he has always known them. Maybe they have always lived inside him, alongside the bones. These melodies, these words, that burn with such ferocious clarity that if he just spoke them aloud then the far would become near and he could reach out and pluck the stars from the sky and cradle them in his hands. _

Danny woke up in his bed, surrounded by the warm press of his friends. The music of his dreams fading to the farthest and darkest reaches of his mind and leaving Danny grasping at nothing for them. So instead of the music he could barely hear the faintest notes of, Danny focused on his friends. His ears had grown so capable that with some focus he could hear even their heartbeats, and at the moment he was glad. His friends’ pulses were a reassuring sound, as much as the feeling of them pressed against his body and breathing right next to him on either side - reassurance that they were truly there.

Slipping between the rhythmic dances of their ever vibrating molecules, Danny got out of the bed and landed on his feet near silently. A glance at the clock told him it was 7:10 AM and Danny was beyond glad that it was Saturday. Holding in a yawn, he walked straight to the bathroom, did his routine, and headed downstairs in just his binder and boxers, as everyone in the household had seen him in already.

Or so he thought. There was a woman in a purple suit with a tie and curly hair sitting in one of the chairs in his living room, holding up an electronic recorder. And his parents and sister were on the couch, everyone fully dressed. And staring at him. In his underwear. Considering he just let loose a string of swears therein, he hoped the lady didn’t speak Mandarin.

Three minutes later Danny came down in a purple shirt bearing the FMA logo on it and some sweat pants. “Uh, hi?”

“Danny, I told you about this interview already,” Jazz said through grit teeth. “This is Souda Ayodele from Genius magazine.” A quick look on the second layer of everything showed that her aura was one of angry beige bees.

Danny turned to stare at the reporter. “Hi there.” Ms. Ayodele waved back, and Danny walked past the entire event to the kitchen. “Eggs, or Cereal?” Danny hummed, before catching his mother’s voice pointing out that her focus was ghost hunting. “Oh, this will be hilarious.” Grabbing cereal, a bowl, and milk, Danny used his intangibility to speed up getting everything together and grabbing a spoon. He was on the couch in time to hear Jazz claim that ghost hunting was a hobby.

“What they’re really involved in is inventing.” Jazz smiled, trying to steer the conversation to somewhere safe and normal.

“True, we do invent a majority of the time. I’ve personally worked on improving the power sources for all of our things around Fentonworks. Though, we do mechanical engineering as well,” Mom said as Danny ate his cereal.

Dad pulled out one of their holographic projectors and hit the button to let it float. “I have a full inventory of our inventions right here actually! For instance-”

“Dr. Fenton” Ayodele said, clearly having been here long enough to know that if she didn’t just interrupt then Dad would keep talking. “Pardon the interruption, but is that...device, um...floating?"

Dad and Mom blinked, looking at each other. Even Danny and Jazz cocked their heads at the question. Their parents had been toying around with hover engines for years, what was the big deal about that?

"Well, yes," Mom began. "That's a patented Fenton Gravity Inverter."

"And...how much can your...um, Gravity Inverter lift?" The reporter asked again.

"Approximately one metric ton, depending on the model." Dad shrugged. "But the Gravity Inverter is only a small part of the FentonWorks itinerary, such-”

"I'm sorry, but just to confirm: your laboratory has successfully created a device which can lift a ton of weight into the air without the energy requirements being prohibitive?" The reporter asked finally.

"Yes," Mom explained slowly as if talking to a child. "It's a relatively simplistic application of physics. Both Danny and Jazz, our children, have been building them for us for years while my husband and I focused on more advanced applications of our research. The Gravity Inverter is, quite literally, 'kids stuff.' In fact, I think Danny built the model that we eventually decided on using for the Fenton Holoprojector."

“A waste of an afternoon since I coulda been working on my paints,” Danny muttered around his cereal.

Ayodele turned to the kids fully. “Mr. and Ms. Fenton, is what your parents saying true?"

Danny shrugged, clearing his throat as he nodded. "Ah, sure. I mean, those things are pretty easy, I could almost build one in my sleep nowadays. I’m even using one for a side project I’m doing with a friend. They're not like Physics Cancelers or anything, right Jazz?"

"I guess they're pretty easy," Jazz shrugged, uncomfortable with being the center of attention. "Mom and dad only ask us to work with the safe stuff anyway. None of this is too complicated." Jazz turned to her parents, "If you're using the Model II that Danny built for the Projector, why did you want me to put together a Model VI last week?”

Mom smiled, "Oh, that's for the Specter Speeder, sweetie. We'll be showing that off a little later. At any rate, though, we would like to get on with the demonstration now. Jack, honey, if you would?"

“Rightio Mads!” Dad pulled out a remote from his pocket and a projection of an oblong, missile-like object coated in shiny metal and streamlined with a flaming F decal on both sides. The projection spun in the air at Dad’s press of a button.

"The Fenton Ghost Zone Probe," Mom began, “When finished, will be launched into the Ghost Portal and take numerous measurements including temperature, ecto-thermography, radiospectronomy, and more...of course, this will include video and audio data!"

“Did you say… Ghost Portal?” The woman looked remarkably uneased by the implications of there being a ghost portal, which was understandable. Danny wasn’t a fan of the fact himself. Just realizing how easily he slid through matter without even a second thought had Danny shuddering.

“Yup! We can’t exactly show ya that one just yet,” Dad said with a sigh. “We didn’t prepare for a presentation proper. We can, however, describe to you exactly how it works!”

And so Dad did just that and Danny tuned him out, eating his cereal since he’d heard this all before about six times. Instead, he focused on the look of mounting horror on Jazz’s face and counted the seconds before she interrupted Dad again.

“The portal isn’t what we’re here to talk about, Dad!” Wow, a full 36 seconds. Danny was impressed. “Can we talk about your work in energy? A self-regenerating energy source?”

“Ectoplasm, Jazz.” Danny pointed with his spoon. “They’re converting some of the nuclear batteries to use reactions with ectoplasm instead of the usual stuff.”

“Nuclear… batteries?” The poor reporter looked so lost and Danny had to wonder why. Did he say something about ghosts? Well beyond ectoplasm but everyone knew ghosts were made of ectoplasm. “Do the two of you work at a nuclear facility?”

“No?” Mom frowned. “We have nuclear batteries in our ghost hunting technology.”

“The entire facility is powered by a reactor under the labs.” Danny rolled his eyes. “And solar panels on the roof and a backup geothermal generator. Actually, all of our windows are solar panels too. I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad are just looking for ways to replicate those effects with ectoplasm?”

“Like we told you, Danny, it’s far more efficient in storage and output of energy than any material we’ve found on earth or any other dimension.”

“I know Mom, I just… I dunno, expected something new?” Danny shrugged and slurped up the milk from his now-empty bowl, relishing in Jazz’s glare. “Well, I’m gonna be upstairs having fun.” It was then that Danny spotted Tucker and Sam on the stairs, Sam in her black jeans and a Dumpty Humpty shirt she left last time she stayed over and Tucker in a button-up of Danny’s. “Guys, c’mon, ignore the interview we’ve got funner stuff to do.”

“That’s not a word, Danny.” Sam rolled her eyes. “This explains why English teachers hate you.”

“Oh please,” Danny chuckled as he headed into the kitchen, waiting for Sam and Tucker to grab their breakfast. “The teachers love me. Lancer’s just a pain.”

“Dude,” Tucker said as he grabbed a bag of bacon bits like they were chips and started eating. “You guys have nuclear reactors in your house?”

“Well not in  _ this _ house specifically but yeah,” Danny shrugged. “Did you think we were on the city’s power grid or something?”

“Actually honey we’re supplying power to the whole town,” Mom called out, displaying that all mothers were supernatural entities that could hear anything.

“Huh. Well, there ya go.” Danny shrugged and headed to and up the stairs. Sam and Tucker soon followed, Sam holding a bowl full of fruit. “Did you put that there yesterday?”

“Yes, you need healthier food in this house, Danny - also why am I only just learning that you guys power the entire town?” Sam was scowling at him, and Danny wasn’t sure what he’d done this time.

“Because I only just found out?”

“What did you mean by This house, Danny?” Tucker sat on Danny’s bed while Sam got into his desk chair. “Do you guys have more than one house?”

“Yeah, FentonWorks is the entire block.” Judging by his friends’ expressions, Danny hadn’t told them this. “I guess it never came up?” Danny held up a game disc. “Did you think I built our HorrorStations in my room?” Danny slid the disc into the hand made console, grabbed his controller, and sat next to Tucker.

Before Tucker could respond, Danny felt a chill run up his spine, into his lungs and past his lips and he looked around on the second realm, but he was too late. The robot Sam had described appeared, right behind Danny, arm aimed point-blank at him. A net shot out and tangled around Danny’s body, throwing him off the bed and into his own console. In seconds, all three of them were bound in blue nets. “Hello, Ghost Child.”

“Who are you?” Danny arched a brow. He needed a moment to pull that power of  _ brilliant, life granting stars _ into his muscles. If he transformed inside the house for a fight his parents would not only notice but come up and see his ghost form instead of him.

“I am Skulker,” the robot said, holding up a holographic projection of a cage filled with green abominations unto all gods Danny could think of. “A collector of things rare and unique. And you, ghost child, are that and more.” Skulker laughed, far more dramatically than he deserved to, and took a step, Danny’s rocket cracking and shattering into pieces.

“That’s my fucking rocket!” Green fire filled Danny’s veins and he tore the net off of himself, rising to put some dents in the robot. But when he reached into himself proper, that ice-cold void, heatless and full of lights that no other human being could ever claim to see, he was burned and staggered backward. “I built that! Just like this!” The Wrist Ray™ struck Skulker in the chest, burning a hole in him, and Danny felt that fire drain out of him into the weapon.

Sam and Tucker behind him used their own wrist rays to cut through the nets, and Sam’s shot from her crouch on the ground sailed over Skulker’s ducking head, leaving a dent in Danny’s wall. Skulker hit a button on his wrist and the nets began to snap and crackle. Danny reached out and snatched Tucker away before he could get zapped, and kicked the net away from Sam’s feet. He let go just fast enough that neither of them felt the shocks when they raced up into his body and forced his every muscle to tense up - nerves ablaze with screams that he couldn’t make.

Tucker raised his Wrist Ray ™ but Skulker shot it off of his wrist and he yelped. “Holy shit!”

“Come now, ghost boy, I expected this to be far more of a challenge. And yet here you are, easily cowed by the merest targeting of your little friends?” Skulker’s words barely reached Danny’s ears. All he could hear was the rushing of his blood and  _ pain _ . Just as the current died down, Danny’s vision blacked out when Sam’s Wrist Ray shot missed the netting itself and hit his  _ foot _ instead.

The door opened with a bang. “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM MY SON!”  _ BOOM _ Skulker was blasted back by Dad’s bazooka into the wall, and Danny’s vision slowly returned to him. “Jasmine, take your brother to the infirmary! Kids, get out of here!”

Skulker launched a net at Dad but Mom came to the rescue with her own cannon fire. It struck Skulker right in the net launcher and ripped off a piece of paneling on his arm. With a snarl, Skulker took in his surroundings and reached down to grab something purple, before fading from sight and quickly vacating Danny’s range of extra senses.

And soon that didn’t matter because Danny was being rushed down to the infirmary and he could hear Sam and Tucker telling his parents what had happened, ignoring the reporter entirely. Letting out a cough, Danny turned to Jazz and flashed a grin. It felt more like a grimace. “Hey, I stopped them from embarrassing you in that interview right?”

“You’re a disaster, little brother.” Jazz took a breath and carded a hand through his hair like she always did when he was hurt. “We’re gonna get you better, and when you’re better you’re gonna explain to me what the hell you were thinking.”

“Sure thing, Spazz.” Danny chuckled and sighed. “I think I need a nap.”

_ Danny  _ _ reaches out, eyes transfixed on the distant hearts of stars. One whisper is all it needs. He could do it. He can. If he could just shape the cold clay of his lips _ .

Danny opened his eyes to the sight of Jazz, Tucker, Sam and his Mom all sitting around the infirmary and doing things. Sam was looking through one of her scrapbooks while Tucker did something on one of his PDAs - didn’t Skulker fly off with the other one? Jazz was reading a book about trauma and Mom was checking something on a holographic display. Everything was unnervingly quiet, and for a moment Danny considered going back to sleep.  _ Rare and unique. Enough of a freak that some ghost would come hunting me down just to say to the rest of the Underworld ‘hey look, I caught the weirdo!’ regardless of who got in his way or what I have to say about it. Horologium, with how I rip apart ghosts that piss me off bad enough, I might as well  _ **_be_ ** _ one of the weird Things that he was showing off in his little hologram. _

Instead of dwelling on how his very fucked up existence that shouldn’t have been was putting his family in danger now, he sat up. His muscles were sore and stiff, and he let out a pained groan from the action, but Danny was at least relieved that he could move at all. “Okay, remind me never to touch another live wire again.” He saw his friends wince and shrugged before wincing again himself.

“Danny! Oh, honey don’t try to move too much, alright?” Mom came to his side in the blink of an eye, checking him over for any signs of electrical burns. “Oh Danny, baby, are you alright?”

“I’m about as sore as Zephyrus was about Hyacinthus, but I think I’ll be alright. Though, I’d love to never have to deal with that again.” Danny let out a sigh and laid his head back.  _ I’d also love to be done with this getting better thing. What was it that Mom and Dad said about ectoplasm? It can absorb electromagnetic energy? _ Danny closed his eyes and reached out for the dangling threads of buzzing whines in the lights and sockets, pulling it into himself clumsily. He bit back a yelp and felt his arm practically convulse when the electricity went the wrong way.  _ Note to self, don’t try that in human form again. Human bodies are complicated. _

“Flex your muscles slowly and methodically, Danny,” Tucker said. “Gotta get your blood flowing. And check for nerve damage, cause electricity is horrible for the body. Speaking of, thank you for pulling us out of those nets."

Sam came over and held out a hand, looking slightly unsure as to what she wanted to do. "Gods, I'm so sorry for shooting you in the foot."

Danny laughed, ignoring the pain of tensing muscles because that was the last thing anyone needed to apologize for as far as Danny was concerned. "You got the net off yourself by blasting it so you blasted the net on my foot, it's cool. Though, if we end up netted again, please just grab something non-conductive to knock the net away."

"There will be no Next Time, pumpkin. The anti-ghost defense grid is up and running and no nasty ghost robot is getting in here to target you."

"Thanks, Mom." Danny let out a sigh and felt something uncurl in relief. He was safe at home, at the very least. "So Jazz, I think I owe you a thought process."

"That is correct, Second."

"Well, False Maturity, I was thinking, 'that button has something to do with those nets. If I get them away from Sam and Tuck, he can't hurt them with them.' And so I tried doin that."

"My boy the hero!" Dad came barreling into the room and immediately scooped Danny up into a hug. "Gave us all a scare! That ecto scum will think twice before trying to attack FentonWorks now!"

“I’ve been told… lungs are important.” Danny hugged back anyway of course, he wasn’t going to leave this hug ever.

“Mom, Dad,” Jazz piped up. “The things that come out of the portal are clearly dangerous. One attacked Danny in his room! Why haven’t we shut down the portal yet?” The squeeze of Dad’s hug got uncomfortably tighter.

“We’ve tried, Jazzerincess, can’t get the darn thing to turn off.” Danny felt his blood run even colder.

“What?”   
Mom sighed and ran a hand over her face. “We unplugged it, cut all the power from the portal but it seems to be self-sustaining. All we can do is block it up with those blast doors.”

For several moments there was silence while everyone digested that they had no solid way of keeping the ghosts out of their world.  _ And I'm the one who opened the door in the first place. _

Sam cleared her throat. "Drs. Fenton? I know who the ghost is. He told us during his monologing he died putting down the last female purple back gorilla in a hunt. Name’s Hunter Grosvenor.” Sam sneered around the name as though it were the most disgusting piece of meat she'd had to swallow in her life.

Danny covered his mouth with his hand, curling his fingers into a fist slowly. Blowing air into it, he resisted the urge to growl. Tucker glared at the sky, daring Skulker to appear so he could dismantle him personally. “I’ve not felt so incredibly violent in a while. I need videogames-"

"Actually," Tucker interrupted with a sigh. "Your Horrorstation broke in all the fighting. The scrap heap also stole my PDA."

"First he gives my best friend a burn on her stomach, then he breaks my models and now my videogames? When I next see Skulker, I'm going to burn a hole through his faceplate." Danny groaned, laying his head back. "Can I get a moment with Sam and Tuck?"

"Of course, son." Dad set him down and ruffled his hair, more gentle with Danny than he ever remembered him being. The air around Dad was vaguely orangish and Danny let the tiniest bit of ectoplasm reach his eyes. The orange air around his dad, probably an aura, was tinged with echoes of sour fear and boiling anger that had Danny ready to crawl out of his skin, grab a gun and hunt Skulker down himself. "You kids go on and do that research project of yours! Mads and I will hunt down that putrid undead creep and rip it apart on a molecular level!"

Danny had never felt so conflicted about something his Dad had said. On one hand, I'd love for him to destroy Skulker. On the other, the dehumanizing way he says it is disturbing as all hell.

Just as the Fenton Adults left the room, Dad turned around with a big grin. "By the way Danny, I'm proud of you for looking out for your friends like that."

A wave of something brilliant and blue and  _ love pride relief joy _ slammed into Danny and filled him from the inside out. And as the door closed, Danny flexed his fingers and rolled his joints. Danny stood up and stretched. "Holy shit guys, I think that Dad just healed me up a bit."

"Sweet. Think he can spread that around or is that a You thing?" Tucker looked ready to take notes since Danny didn't have his notebook on him.

Danny closed his eyes and focused, gently pulling that cool void up and letting it fill his eyes and ears and every nerve on his body. He opened his eyes and Danny saw the world bathed in that extreme indigo-like color that seemed to come off of every person he looked at. Looking closer, he noticed faint blue strings leading from him to his Dad and Mom and Jazz upstairs and a silver string leading to Tucker and Sam each. Reaching out to grasp the one that he just knew belonged to Jazz Danny was floored by so potent and blended a mix of positivity, concern, and manic energy that he had to stumble back into the bed. "Danny?"

"Just a me thing. Definitely. I can see these… strings, connecting me to you guys and my family. Like spider threads. But like, made of emotions?" He rubbed his temples and hummed. "Ectoplasm is psychoreactive so maybe it's like, a connection between us made semi tangible to my ghost because of how much ectoplasm is normally around here? You guys definitely got hit by ectoplasm in spades when the portal activated, so that explains why I can see it linking me to you guys too…"

"Hey. Science boy." Sam nudged his hip with her foot and Danny arched a brow at her. "Save the theories for later. We need a game plan to deal with the guy as soon as possible. Grovsner was a very efficient hunter if a sadistic bastard.”

Danny sighed and nodded, sitting back down. “Well, what do we know about him?” Tucker began tapping away at his PDA, eyes moving quickly.

“I know that you’re probably not gonna find anything on the internet. I had done a report on his barbaric treatment toward animals for an extra credit project and when I looked back for them, on all the same sites as before. Nothing.” Sam groaned. “But, I do remember what it was he typically did on a hunt for a protected species. He had hunting dogs, laid all kinds of traps, the works. I’m not sure what kind of things ectoplasm can do to a net besides making it gooier, but being able to phase into walls and crawl spaces where you usually go to is something he’s definitely going to take advantage of.”

“So my locker is probably gonna be rigged to explode, I have to worry about hell hounds, and he has nets that might fall on me on the way to the library or just to like, GameStop.” Danny leaned back, closing his eyes. “That sounds fun.”

"You assume there are hell hounds," Tucker snorted.

"Of course there are."

"Because you  _ so  _ want there to be ghost dogs."

"Tucker. Imagine it. A dog that doesn't poop, just cuddles up with you and gives you infinite love."

"Don't all dogs go to Heaven, Danny?"

"I have strong evidence that there is no such thing as Heaven just like. A door down. Literally past that wall over there."

"Fair enough." Tucker sighed and laid his head back. Then he sat straight up with a grin. "You know what's a great way of being harder to trap?"

"Intelligence?"

"Mobility, Sam. If we finish those hoverboards we should be able to avoid most of his land traps!" Danny and Tucker beamed at each other and high fived each other. 

"I'm good to go on that! Sam, wanna learn how to-"

"You guys can have your geek things, Danny, I'm heading upstairs to make use of all your handhelds." Sam smiled and held her hands up, walking to the stairs. "Scream if you need me."

"Same to you!" Danny grinned and headed to the door that lead to the main lab.

“You know how your gravity inverter™ works better than I do so I’m gonna work on like, an AI. No, Danny don’t give me that look, it’s just for navigation, it isn’t self improving or anything like that. I just want something to help me not crash into things when flying.”


	7. Monday Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teen Geniuses Almost Die in Lab Accident, Teens Ask Dead Lady About Poacher, Solar Punk Goth Discusses Business With Rich Grandma, Fish Attack, Super Hero Therapudes Sisterly Therapist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized it's been a fuckin MONTH since I last updated a chapter over here, i am so sorry y'all, you deserve better than that. I dearly hope you enjoy this chapter

Saturday night had ended with Tucker and Danny standing behind a bubble of green light as the hoverboard power source they had been experimenting with exploded in their faces. Thankfully, one of Danny’s powers kicked in just in the nick of time. It immediately exhausted him though, and so they resolved to stick to easier things like repairing Danny’s broken HorrorStation. That took a touch longer than either of them expected - not getting done until the next afternoon. By then, Tucker and Sam had both gotten texts telling them they had to come back home, and Danny flew them there to be safe.

“Hey Danny, do you think Agatha’s food can heal people?” Tucker asked on the way to his house, prompting Danny to stop and turn that idea around in his head. “She has to be pretty amazing for the people at the Soup Kitchen for them not to kick her out, or call an exorcist or something right?”

“Tucker, she can conjure up any food simply from the Ether. I’m pretty sure that’s incentive enough to keep her a secret from The Fentons or anyone who’d try to get rid of her.”

“Fair point, Sam, but Tucker has a potential point. Maybe we should go see?”

Sam shrugged, then tightened her grip on Danny’s waist. “Alright, I guess. Maybe she’ll know something about Skulker.”

“You’re clinging pretty tight there, Sam, are you afraid I’ll drop you?”

“Danny, you are a marshmallow. You wouldn’t drop  _ Dash _ from this height unless someone shot your hand.”

“Course, Danny’s ghost is an inverse of his human self.” Tucker poked Danny’s side, drawing out a giggle. “Black and white hazmat instead of his usual bright colored clothes. His hair is the opposite color, his face is a blueberry.”

“He’s right, Sam. I might just drop ya cause I’m a spoopy ghost. What if my fluffiness inverts in death?”

“Nah,” Sam said with a shake of her head. “Same fluffy hair, same dorky goggles and you still have a hood. You’re a big ol kitten. Hell, you just giggled cause Tucker- stop tickling him, we all might fall out of the sky.”

“Fine, fine, you’re safe for now.” Danny stuck out his tongue as he landed in an alleyway and looked around to make sure that no one was there. Then he grasped that endless void and folded it back up inside of himself, like an origami, until he was looking at tan skin and a yellow shirt instead of his hazmat suit.

When they walked in, Danny took in the bare walls, tile flooring, long rows of tables with folding chairs. People talking, laugh tracks from the TV, the slap of food on a plate, laughter, singing and humming, and the heavy scent of well-cooked fish, chicken, beef, pasta, and rice. For a moment he let it sink in, along with letting Tucker and Sam orient themselves, before waving as he approached the buffet line. “Ms. Reece? How are you doing?”

Agatha looked up from serving someone a plate, her dim veridian aura flaring up with  _ happy fond appreciation _ light with the force of her smile. “Why hello dearies! Just one moment!” She handed off her position in line to someone else smoother than Danny could’ve managed with any tool he passed to his family members during a project, and floated on over. “Danny, you’re still so thin! Are you eating more like I told you too?”

“He most certainly is, Ms. Reece,” Tucker chimed in. “I think he just burns up all the energy he gets from it as fast as he eats it.”

“Well, dear, considering your condition I’d say you’re probably not eating the right kind of food.” Agatha leaned in closer and whispered, in a way that assured Danny beyond any shadow of a doubt that only he and his friends could hear her. “If I’m guessing correctly, you should likely mix in a bit of ectoplasm with your food. You’re right on top of a gate to the Ethereal Plane so you should either dip in to get a feel for it, or add the stuff to what you normally eat.” 

“Thanks, Ms. Reece, I’ll give that a try.” Danny smiled and nodded, filing that bit of info away for when he went grocery shopping.

Leaning back into a proper stand, she clasped her hands together with a smile. “What can I do for ya dears?”

“Well, I was wondering Ms. Reece, have you ever found your meals to have, say, healing properties?” Tucker was now visibly wincing in pain, the asprin likely wearing off by now and pains shooting through him in echoing throbs that Danny could practically see when he looked on that second layer. “We don’t mean to press or anything, it’d just be great to know.”

Agatha covered her mouth as she looked over Tucker’s shoulder, likely seeing right through the shirt to the wound. “Claws, ey? Cuts like those will take a few days to get better. Unfortunately, deary, I don’t have enough power to heal someone like that. That’d be someone stronger than myself, like old Theodore. I’m not sure, entirely, where he went around the Ethereal Plane, but I know he loves to help any of the poor animals that he finds injured or lost.”

“Thank you for telling us,” Tucker said with a thin smile. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

“On the other hand, Ms. Reece, we also came here to ask you if you could tell us anything about a ghost calling himself Skulker, that’d be great.” Danny offered up his best puppy dog eyes, while Sam snorted at him.

“Sugary tone aside, he’s right. His name in life was Hunter Grovsner if that helps at all.”

Agatha tapped her chin, thoughtful. “Well, he’s certainly brought in the larger beasties for me to prepare whenever the winter festivals begin. He loves telling everyone he can stories about how he caught one thing or another. Why is it that you ask, children?”

Danny drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Let’s just say that he might try toting me around this christmas if we can’t stop him.” Agatha’s eyes widened and grew a slightly darker shade of red. “He says he collects creatures rare and unique, and that I’ll be a fine addition.”

“If I see him I’ll do what I can to help you, Danny dear. Be careful, though, he can be a crafty one.”

“Thanks Ms. Reece. You stay safe!” The teens waved and headed out the door and around the corner. “Wonderful. Even in the ethereal plane, the asshole manages to take down everything he’s hunting.”

“Not necessarily,” Sam pointed out. “He didn’t manage to get away from his fight with that purple back gorilla! And a machine can be repaired a lot easier than flesh and blood can so how do we know that he doesn’t just tell everyone about the poor animals that he’s actually managed to catch in the Ethereal Plane?”

“Sam, how did you say that with your mouth?”

“Just think of it like a proper name, Tucker, it’s not that hard.” Sam waved his question off as they entered the alleyway and Danny rose higher and higher, liquid starmetal rushing through his veins and illuminating the walls with a miniature dawn. “But the point is that you don’t need to be so gloom and doom - that’s my job.”

“Are you sure you’re a goth, Sam? You seem much more punkish to me- ow, ow, I will totally drop you! It’s only 5 feet.”

“Ah yes, dropping us from your height wouldn’t hurt much I suppose.”

“Hilarious as this all is, my shoulder is stinging and I’d love to get home, take some asprin, and crawl into bed so I don’t have to think about school until I wake up.”

“Gotcha Tuck.” The icy cold glass falling through them sensation of invisibility washed over the group and Danny grinned. “First stop is yours.”

Danny set Sam down around the corner of her block and the duo saluted each other. "Stay alive, star boy, I wanna be there to kick that bucket of bolts' ass with you when it happens."

"Think you can record it for posterity?"

Sam looked down at her camera, going through the pictures from above Amity that she had gotten on the fly back home. "Maybe. We'll see about that boy wonder." They laughed and Danny melted into the air, a blue black and white blur that smeared against the air before vanishing all together. The cold presence that he exuded moved until the only cold was that of being in an alley in September.

Walking inside the gates, Sam took a moment to look around at her room, wondering if she should tell him that she’d made him drink ectoplasm - straight from the ground even - to heal him up the first time.  _ He’d be so grossed out - hell, just thinking about this is grossing  _ me _ out so maybe not. _ Regardless, she had a task to get to. Heading up the stairs, Sam wandered a bit until she was able to find her grandma sitting in her chair in one of her studies, reading in front of the fireplace. "Grandma Ida?"

“Sam, come in come in! I was just reading one of those books you brought me from the Skulk and Lurk.” Grandma Ida set the book down and turned a smile Sam’s way as she entered the room and sat down. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Sam smiled and pulled a binder out of her backpack. “I was interested in starting up a little business project. Maybe introduce Manson corp into a new branch of industry.” She took a deep breath. “The automotive industry to be specific. I know that we work in food and make plenty off of that, but I have an idea that could blow any model out there on the road out of the water  _ and _ be environmentally friendly and even revolutionize transportation today!”

Grandma Ida tilted her head and held out a hand. When Sam gave the binder over, she flipped slowly through each paper, examining them carefully. Sam had seen her grandma in business mode a few times before, but it was always something to see her go from light hearted and jovial to serious and contemplative. After a moment, Sam was handed back the binder and her grandma gave her a smile. “If you can show me a schematic or blueprint to prove that you can get this project started, you’ve got the go ahead bubellah. This is an ambitious goal, but I see you have a start on getting it designed already with your friend. You always manage to get something done when you’ve set your mind on it, so I’m confident you’ll manage this too.”

“Thank you, Grandma.” Sam wrapped her up in a tight hug before rummaging through her bag to pull out a scrap book. “Wanna see what I’ve taken pictures of recently? I haven’t shown them to you in a while.” Sam loved sharing her pictures with her grandma, especially since she was the one to get her into photography in the first place.

“Of course, love. Come here and let’s see.”

The walk to school the next day was tense. Danny had on his bright purple shirt and the crystal pendant that Sam had given him his last birthday as a good luck charm. Sam was wearing a dark green shirt, her shorter black jacket, and if Danny didn’t know better… “Sam are those my jeans?”

“You weren’t using them, now were you?”

“I left those at Tucker’s!”

“Tucker is wearing one of my shirts right now Danny.”

“And your jacket.” Tucker tugged on the bright red and white jacket Danny’s Mom had gotten him to celebrate getting into Casper High. “Sam embraces her true, Punk, self and I get to look like the beacon of positive vibes I am.”

“Sure you do, Tuck, sure.” Danny shook his head and looked around when they got to school. Looking around, Danny held out an arm to stop his friends and toed the floor right at the top of the steps. Feeling his foot sink right through, Danny sucked on his teeth and dragged his foot around until he found solid ground and settled there. Then he put his hand on the ground and focused. Green light poured out of his hands and the intangible became tangible again. A Knock proved the concrete real again and he waved them both up. "Probably some kind of tech that can turn things intangible but throw up a hologram of what's supposed to be there." Danny rolled his eyes while Sam and Tucker headed inside. "How he managed to rig it to only work with me, though, is what I'm trying to figure out."

"Remote control maybe? He's probably stalking you and waiting for the right moment to shoot." Tucker stuck a hand into the pockets of the stolen jacket and tilted his head. "Danny, why do my hands go so deep into this jacket?"

"The portapockets™ probably." Danny shrugged and opened his locker. The door swung open and a glowing blue net flew out and pinned Danny to the wall, solid and present even when Danny reached instinctively for that space between spaces. "Rude." And then painpainpain white hot and crackling and surging through every vein and muscle and bone, his molecules buzzing and pulling apart and it Hurt!

Hearing Danny's scream, Tucker reached deeper into his pocket, grabbed onto a gun handle, and pulled out a Fenton Ecto Pistol. Pulling the trigger in the next second, Tucker blasted the inside of Danny's locker and destroyed the source of the charge, leaving Danny simply pinned to the wall and crispy. 

Unfortunately a creature with rows of sharp teeth barreled down the hall in their direction, faster than Tucker could turn around. Sam raised her wrist ray to burn a hole in the side of the green skinned monstrosity but it ducked out of the way and clamped onto Tucker's leg.

A nasty, animalistic snarl came out of Danny's throat as he ripped the net off of himself and pulled out his rifle. The weird land shark thing tossed Tucker at him, however, and Danny stumbled down against the locker wall. The screams of running teens was unhelpful for Sam's concentration but Tucker kept the thing's attention with a shot of his pistol. Sam's own pistol struck it in the leg and it stumbled, flailing it's head and knocking her in the gut. 

Utterly fed up with the shit going on, Danny growled and shoved the barrel of his ecto rifle in the shrieking maw of the ghost fish thing and pulled the trigger. It's body slammed into his locker, denting it irreparably, and it dissolved into a puddle of green bubbling goop.

Turning his attention to Tucker, Danny grimaced and moved slowly and carefully, taking up Tucker's arm to keep weight off of his now bleeding leg. "Damn, that thing really fucked you up, huh?" His chest felt tighter than the binder made it when he looked over at Sam and saw her picking herself up slowly. "Fuck, guys, I'm sorry. Damn thing wouldn't've gotten either of you if I wasn't a freak worth capturing."

"Less unfounded guilt, more getting to the nurse's office- Tucker, I'm sorry, but they're gonna send you there whether we take you now or after we go to class." Sam walked over and held Tucker up on his other side. "Better get it over with."

"Maybe I can do something to help?" Tucker shrugged at Danny's question, more focused on trying to keep his weight on his uninjured foot. Danny reached down to the row of dots leaking blood from Tucker's calf and reached within. The silvery black shadows brightened slowly and steadily, rising from his fingertips as wisps of cool, calm, midnight blue salted with sparkling stars. He guided it into Tucker's body, the buzzing, erratic current of golden yellow and metallic chrome melding with the energy easily. Quickly, the blood clotted and Tucker was no longer losing anymore of it.

Standing up shakily, Danny let out a breath and pulled his energy back into himself. "Danny, brother, amigo, that was weird and cold as fuck but thank you. I could kiss you right now."

"You're still going to the nurse."

"These lips are too good for you anyway."

The trip to the nurse was as horrible as anything to do with medicine usually was when Tucker had to be part of it. Thankfully all his leg required was some disinfectant, bandaging, and painkillers. Of course, Tucker wasn't to put weight on it for a while. "Guess that means school from home then?" Principal Ishiyama was fine with that thankfully, though her condition was learning what in god's name happened. As she, Lancer, and the trio reviewed the security footage in her office, Danny explained to Principal Ishiyama that ghosts are actually very real. 

"They also happen to be potentially dangerous depending on the ghost and situation. Like that fish thing." Danny sighed, tugging at the strings of his hoodie. "I dunno what it even was, to be honest with you, just that it didn't take well to Fenton Anti Ghost weaponry."

"Yes, about That," Ishiyama said. "Why exactly are you three carrying Weapons in my school?"

Sam rolled her eyes and gestured at the screens. "To fight ghosts with. These things barely do anything to human beings."

"They really don't. The Fentons have checked. Plus portals open up all over the place for them to come through."

"That is to say that my father has run countless safety tests on any and all equipment he makes before my Mom refines the idea to make sure it's safe for human interaction." Danny huffed and tilted his head skyward, counting the tiles on the ceiling. "I promise you, Principal Ishiyama, Mr. Lancer, there's nothing to worry about regarding Fenton Tech weaponry."

"And what of these-these creatures you're talking about, Mr. Fenton?" Lancer was pacing, much to the annoyance of everyone. "Are you able to guarantee we won't have to worry about those either?"

"Oh, no, ghosts are a wild card. I'm like 70% sure why it was here, but I could be wrong."

"And does this have to do with the net that flew from your locker, Daniel?"

Danny heaved as mighty a sigh as possible. "Yes Ma'am it does." He looked back at the principal and wished dearly for this conversation to be over. "May we please not bring this up with our parents? Mine are aware that this stupid robot is after me and I'm pretty sure that he only tried here cause the defense system at home is too well made for him to get me there."

"Absolutely not, Daniel! Not only will I be discussing this with your parents but until such a time as you are no longer the target of attack outside of your home, you are to stay there and your school work shall be emailed to you." Danny was handed a piece of paper and groaned as he scrawled on his email address. "We will be discussing having a new security system set up here at the school."

"Oh stars,  _ Astrea _ , please don't have them come here. Jazz and I'll be the laughing stocks of the entire school!”

Ishiyama arched a brow and Danny winced. "Maintaining your social status is hardly more important than the safety of yourself and your fellow students, Daniel. We will discuss replacing your destroyed books and moving your locker when you get back safely. Until then, you are dismissed. Your sister should be outside the door waiting."

"Peachy," Danny muttered, standing up and helping Tucker to his feet. Sure enough, sitting in the waiting room outside the door was Jazz in her flora print dress that made every other girl jealous because Dad sewed pockets into it. "Hey Jazz. He sent a cryptid after me this time instead of fighting me himself cause he's a little-"

"This is still the principal's office, Danny, as much as I agree with you." Sam covered his mouth and he licked her hand. "Has that worked on me even once, Danny? Ever? Between you and Tucker?" Danny shrugged and Sam rolled her eyes.

"Danny this is no time for jokes! Look at you and Tucker! Oh gods, you have more electrical burns!" Danny sucked on his teeth.  _ I forgot about those, thanks Jazz. Now I can feel every burning ache of them. _ Jazz fretted over the group for a long moment before the receptionist recommended they do this elsewhere. "Of course! Come on, I'll get everyone home."

Jazz mother hened the whole way to first Sam's and then Tucker's house, but Danny remained adamantly scarce on details. It was irritating on both ends to say the least but once and his friends were safely at home, Danny sighed loudly. "As the one who turned the thing into a splatter on the lockers, I can promise you Jazz, it wasn't a big deal. Skulker himself is way worse and when I find him I'm gonna rip him apart bolt by nut and then Tuck and I can examine the guts to build robots."

"You have electrical burns all over you, Danny."

"You can only see them on my face and barely." Danny smirked. "You're just mad I can pull off the bad boy look that scars give me."

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Yes, Danny, I'm sure. You do look adorable with your cloud of fluff surrounding those chubby cheeks." Danny felt heat flood his face and whined, pulling on the strings of his hoodie to cover up his no doubt semi invisible face. "Don't worry Danny; everyone loves freckles!"

As embarrassing as the compliments were, Danny could see on the second realm that they were genuine. He soaked it up and felt the warmth of  **love fondness care** flood the burned parts of his skin and heal them away until there was nothing left but white scars. More to add to my collection.

"Look, Principal Ishiyama says I gotta stay home till I can get rid of the problem. As far as I know, that cowardly bitch Skulker is the reason that Thing tried to eat me and Tucker. Reminds of me of that time we went to the museum and saw the exhibit on like, Angler fish. But it had hooves with toes on them."

That had been a fun trip to the museum and Danny had drawn Tucker some robot versions of all the ancient life they’d seen models and skeletons of. There was nothing more fun that when the two of them made stuff together, like the robot dinosaur game they played for hours after completing it.

“And if the problem persists after Skulker is taken care of? What if more ghosts attack?” Jazz’s fingers were drumming against the wheel and her usually tranquil jasmine violet aura was leaning closer to beige and simmering. That was another thing to wonder about, why the aurae on the second layer were super imposing themselves on the first.

“They plan on having Mom and Dad add security features to the school. Probably free since it’s a public school that can’t afford something like FentonWorks tech.” Danny crossed his arms, reaching out mentally to grab that silveryblue thread connecting their aurae. Here’s hoping it works.  **Love calm relaxation affection** surged down from Danny to Jazz in their apparent bond and watched Jazz relax both visibly and invisibly. “We’re gonna handle this, Jazz, promise. We’re Fentons.” He nudged her elbow. “We get through the spooky shit.”

Jazz smiled down at him for a moment before driving away from the intersection. “You’re trying to butter me up for your Quinceñero presents, aren’t you?”

“ _ Jasmine _ I would  _ never _ !”


	8. Hunting the Hunter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teen Shows Parents Why He Needs This Paranormal Weapon, Boy Possibly Hallucinating or Psychic, Children Risk Lives to Save Lives and Bicker About Responsiblity, Boy Silently Ponders if Magick Food Counts as Drug

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! So, in my depressive funk I had failed to post on schedule and I know that life comes first and all that, but I like you guys and you stick by me enough to leave comments and stuff so I decided to make up for that lost week. So here ya go!

When Tucker got home, his parents fussed over him, scolded him for not telling them that he was fighting ghosts that came after him and Danny, and made sure that he kept as off his leg as possible.

"You let me keep my bow and arrows! I can do more damage to a human being with those than I can with this ecto pistol. And I'm a great shot!"

"Does it have a safety? Magazines to remove?" Mom wasn't letting up on him for even a moment. She examined the gun from every angle before looking back at Tucker. 

"Yes and no, respectively. The safety is currently on; it's right here but don't turn that off. What if I showed you how good a shot with this I am?"

Tucker's Dad, Maurice, heaved a sigh. "We let you keep the bow and arrows only after you proved you could handle having free access to them. This is… something."

"I'll set up the target, and you show me that you can reasonably use this without hurting yourself. Then, maybe, you can keep it." Mom put her hands on her hips. "You best not let any police officer catch you wielding this potentially deadly weapon."

"Understood!" Tucker saluted, heaving a tired sigh when his parents left to set up the target. Pulling out his PDA, Tucker typed into the schedule he was keeping for Danny, "Foley Shooting Range, hit the target." Setting that for 10 minutes, Tucker hopped his way to the kitchen and made himself a sandwich. 

Once the time came, Tucker was outside in his backyard, his archery targets set up for him to shoot at. Leaning on his dad, Tucker raised his pistol and shot the targets one after the other. All of them hit, even if he missed the bullseye. He turned the safety back on and grinned. "Se-"

Three loud blasts flew from above them and Tucker looked up to see Skulker scowling at the wrist not protruding a big fuck off plasma cannon. From this angle, it looked almost like… it couldn’t be. “Is that my PDA?! I have 3 more payments on that!” Tucker nearly raised his pistol but considered that his Mom and Dad were there, and while he pitied the fool that confronted Angela Foley, this was a fight his parents couldn’t help him with. Nostrils flaring he glared up at Skulker with all the impotent rage he could muster and the robot flipped him off before flying away. “This is why I need this pistol; hostile ghosts can only really be hurt by Fenton weaponry.”

His parents were a touch easier to convince of letting him keep the Ecto Pistol after that. Tucker decided the best distractions were working on things, so he got to work on that A.I. and the car design.

Danny couldn't Not see it now and that was bothering him. That extreme indigo-esque color that blanketed the second plane of reality like a contact lens was now just barely there Everywhere. Danny could see and trace every electrical current around him, track his family by the individual aura each of them had, and if he actually tried to look on that second layer he could see threads binding them all together. The strongest ones connecting to him lead to Jazz and off into the distance. Probably to Sam and Tucker.

And so there Danny was, writing in his journal while everyone was at school for various reasons, and muttering to himself. "The ultraviolet light is starting to seep into my everyday vision, though mirror checks show no actual visible signs unless I actively check. Internet searches only call this whole aura thing The Sight, but unless I go out and look for naturally hidden ghosts and spirits, I can't be sure this is that. Is it safe to bring up that I can see the incorporeal if this  _ is _ the Sight?" He tapped his cheek with the eraser of the mechanical pencil and hummed. "Debatable, consider later. Leaning toward No.

"Pressing issue is Skulker; how to trap him is key. He can't stand up to our bigger guns, that I'm sure of but we need to figure out how to out plan him." Danny groaned and dug the heel of his palm into his eye and rubbed away the exhaustion. "He can't attack me while I'm at home so this is both a safe zone and also an invalid area for the fight…"

Danny's phone rang and he nearly snapped his mechanical pencil in half. Thankfully he only cracked it and set it down gently. "Tucker, you nearly cost me another pencil." Reclining, he laid his head on his pillow and stared up at the constellations he made with glow in the dark stickers. "How's the leg and arm?"

"I'm not the source of your paranoia Danny, and you know it." Tucker snorted and Danny could practically see him rolling his eyes. "Arm's fine, the leg is still sore. How're you holdin up?"

"Lil freaked out cause I can see that whole uh second level of reality at all times now. It's a good thing I like indigo and blue. Also, I was able to calm Jazz down with that like, bond between us? It was weird but it worked."

"As glad as I genuinely am about this progress we still need to figure out the issue of Skulker," Sam said. Danny checked the time to see it was lunchtime. "One of us is gonna get killed, probably Danny, if we don't do something."

"I feel like I've noticed something weird about Skulker," Tucker said. "He could've shot a tranquilizer dart at all three of us on the way to school, or even just Danny before he met up with us, and be done with it. Instead, he sent a monster after us after we got around his trap."

Danny hummed, eyes narrowing. "Sam, what kind of animals did Grovsner kill in life?"

"The rare and about to go extinct kind," Sam growled.

"That's not what I meant, Sam. You said he died killing the last female purple back gorilla, right? What else did he go after? Did he have like, partners or…"

"No, actually. He always did his hunts solo, went after things like Cape Buffalo, Saltwater Crocodiles, endangered species of squid, sharks, other stuff like that." Sam took a few moments to breathe and stop herself from punching something, likely because Danny wasn't there to punch, and shortly asked, "why?"

"So he only went after dangerous animals alongside rare, showed off everything he caught if his behavior in death is the same as in life, and doesn't just Get It Over With no matter his opportunity to." Danny sat up, eyes wide. "Guys. He's not obsessed with being a hunter. He's obsessed with being seen as Strong!"

"Alright, question: what does obsession have to do with it?"

"C' mon Tuck, you've heard mom and dad rant and ramble. A ghost's form is informed by their self-image in life and they act primarily on their obsession. Agatha is obsessed with food, Skulker is obsessed with being seen as strong." Danny felt himself grinning wickedly and got up to pace. "But he's Not."

"Seemed pretty strong to me when he blew a hole in the observation tower, Danny." Tucker huffed. A pause. "Wait a minute: is he, in fact, a robot?"

Danny hummed. Closing his eyes, he focused on the hum of energy inside of him just past a layer of cold quiet, and visualized it spreading throughout his body. He could feel it tingling under his skin and could see it clearly, a vibrant green light that pushed steadily up to the surface of his skin and then out, blanketing over the room. For a moment, Danny's brain stuttered at the sensations it was forced to process, but he pushed on and reached out over the whole of his room.  _ There! _ Getting up, Danny grabbed the metal panel that'd come off of Skulker when his mom shot him. It was sparking, wires exposed, a few buttons here and there with no discernible purpose at first glance. But the important thing was that it was still There. "No. If the robot was the ghost himself then any pieces that flew off would dissolve into ectoplasmic mist or goop. This bit is still here. Which means he's not strong enough to go after anything on his own." Danny squeezed, hissing when the wires sparked threateningly and tossed it on his desk.

"Sam," Tucker said, "you're filthy fuckin rich, right?"

"That is correct, Tucker, why?"

"So you own that zoo, right? That's how we got in at night?"

"… perhaps."

"Which means we can get  _ back _ in, and set up a trap for Skulker, right?" Danny laughed and flopped into his chair. 

"Tucker, you genius. But how are we gonna get him there?"

"Yesterday my parents were freakin out over everything and threatening to take my pistol away, blah blah, safety, all that junk.” Danny rolled his eyes, struggling to see the Foley’s point there. Danny had been trained to safely fire a gun as early as 11, hell he’d learned how to build one by then! Tucker could aim.

“You’re an archer. You have like, a quiver full of arrows and a bow in your home. What’s the difference?”

“I  _ know _ that’s what I said! But anyway I convinced them to let me prove I could use it properly and know to put the safety back on afterward and I slipped into your schedule, which is linked between my PDAs by the way, to hit the bullseyes in the Foley Target Range. Guess who showed up at the exact time I scheduled that for.”

Danny’s eyes widened and his grin turned vicious as Sam asked, “Does this have to do with your missing PDA?”

“I think I saw it on his arm where Dr. Fenton had shot that panel thing off. He flipped me off and flew away but fuck, man, I’m glad he showed up. Means I can figure out his suit once all of this is over!”

“Sounds good Tuck. Hey, do you mind if I finish up our hoverboard? I have a feeling it’ll be useful.”

“Danny, bromigo, I beg of you: go do that right now. I have a plan, and the Nav Ai is almost done.”

Getting into the Zoo was easy. Sam got them in with access codes she had simply from being the owner, and they set up near the purple-backed gorilla habitat. “You know, Sam, if you’re so concerned about Sampson you can just order better conditions to be built for him.” Danny felt it needed to be said. She hadn't stopped ranting about Sampson in between all the planning, along with all the other animals she was technically in charge of. "This is your place, you can manage it how you want."

"Danny now is not the time for wisdom. Now is the time for taking down robotic assholes. Is your ectorifle charged up?"

"I sang it a battle hymn and it hummed to me of wars long and hard fought." Danny snorted at the dumbfounded looks on his friends' faces. "Yeah, I got it charged up guys, I just had to get into the armory for a little bit and Mom and Dad have been out patrolling with their ghost radar thing." Danny pulled out the rifle and checked it over one last time while Sam and Tucker set up around the cage, a large gorilla costume being pulled out of Tucker's stolen jacket pocket. "I still want that back after all of this is done."

"Make me one of my own and I'll definitely give you this one back, yes. That is a thing that will happen." Tucker giggled and Sam rolled her eyes.

"C' mon guys, we have no idea when Skulker is gonna strike nex-"

An explosion shook the ground between the trio, knocking them all back, and forcing them to cover their eyes to block out flying shards of concrete. When they opened them, the robotic poacher stood before them, toxic green mohawk of fire casting odd shadows over his faceplate and highlighting his predatory grin.

"You certainly know now, don't you girl?" Skulker raised his arm and the hand cannon that Tucker had described unfolded from a panel on his wrist. Before the charge up whine could reach its crescendo, a bolt of green plasma flew into Skulker's back and knocked him forward, burning a fist-sized hole in his back. Skulker turned to Danny with those fiery green eyes and a growl in his chest, firing his cannon at Danny instead. "That's the spirit! The kind of fight I've wanted in my prey for so long!"

Danny, filled with the writhing void that boiled with thousands upon billions of stars, took to the air a second too late and was knocked back on his ass. As he stumbled back up, Danny saw a flash of green and growled as Skulker turned a crossbow that emerged from his shoulder and fired back at Sam. Lunging with every ounce of speed he had in him, Danny only managed to get the bolt torn through his side while it grazed Sam's shoulder.

"Truly, I am disappointed; I expected a greater fight from you, ghost boy! Regardless, you shall look nice in your cage back on my island." Skulker stomped over and reached down to grab Danny by the throat and lifted him into the air triumphantly. "Truly, I am the greatest hunter in the Ethereal Plane!" Danny's ears were ringing, he was bleeding, and the sharp pain spread itself to every nerve in his semi-corporeal body. He laughed, hands grasping at the steel of Skulker's arm. "Why do you laugh, boy? You are defeated!"

"You're not even the best hunter in this zoo. Hell, you're not even a good hunter ghost in the first place. Just a sad little man who wanted to look big in life and couldn't help trying to do it again in death." White hot pain blossomed across his face when Skulker slapped him and Danny spat out some dark brown blood as the ringing set in his ear. "Can't even tell a hologram from a person."

Skulker stared at him for a long moment, silent and motionless, before his grip went slack and his mohawk died out. Danny floated backward from the suit and picked up his rifle, offering a salute to the sky, from which Tucker descended with his belly on the hoverboard. "You are being evicted from your mecha, repeat, your mech suit is being towed." Tucker punched a command into his PDA, and Skulker's chest plate unfolded, ripping open the shirt to reveal a compartment holding a tiny bipedal blob. An ameba that could fit in Danny's hand with eyes, a mouth, and limbs. 

"Release- release me whelp! I shall have your head mounted on my bedroom wall and your pelt made into a rug!" Danny snatched it out of the suit and glared down at Grovsner with all the malice he was physically capable of feeling. A growl rumbled in Danny's chest and out of his mouth and he squeezed. "Alright alright, suck me up into your little soup can and-"

"You path _ etic, arrogant, vile little ameba! You nearly killed Tucker and Sam! You  _ **_electrocuted_ ** _ me! You put the lives of everyone at my school at risk! And for what? To show me off in a cage to everyone at the fucking afterlife Christmas party? _ " Danny pressed the barrel of his rifle against Grovsner's entire body, pinning him to his hand. Then the shadows bent around the source of Danny's fury and gravity itself bound Grovsner in place, allowing for a much cleaner shot. " **_For everything you did in life and everything you've done to me and my family, I hope it takes you a long ass time to pull yourself back together from this._ ** " And then Danny pulled the trigger, and Skulker was turned into a splattering of toxic exotic matter that evaporated before their eyes.

Tucker, now sitting up on the longboard shaped hoverboard, was staring at Danny right beside Sam, the two of them agape. Danny could see in their green and golden auras something less than pleasant mixed with relief. It was silent for a few beats too long and Danny awkwardly slid his rifle back into his pocket. "Dude, you have fucking fangs, they look so badass!"

"What?" Danny blinked a couple of times when Sam raised her camera and took a picture, frowning at his friends when he could see properly. "Did you say I have fangs?"

Sam showed him the picture and yep. His canines were longer and sharper than they should've been, gleaming in the light cast by the flash and his eyes. "They're tiny and adorable, and yet I'm jealous because if anyone should have fangs it should be me!" Sam threw her hands into the air and groaned. "It matches my aesthetic and I deserve to be a creature of the night! You're not even mildly scary!"

"Alright, true, Danny's not intimidating enough for fangs," Tucker agreed, despite Danny's half-hearted disagreement. "But still, they look good on him. The gravity bending is pretty fucking cool though."

"Thanks, guys. That means a lot." Danny pulled both of his friends into a hug before letting out a loud his off pain because that hurt and he was still bleeding, right. Reaching out to those silver threads that resonated with  _ concern care fondness Love _ Danny drew that energy into his wound and let out a long sigh as the burning pain cooled down a bit and dulled into a throbbing ache. "More manageable at least. Here, allow me." Placing a hand on Sam's cut shoulder, Danny concentrated on pouring out his own  _ love affection soothing _ to Sam. He watched as the energy flowed out and into the cut, stitching it mostly together until he could barely see it. "You should probably be careful with that arm anyway. I'm not exactly a doctor yet."

"You wouldn't be that kind of doctor anyway, Danny." Sam gave him a hug again, ruffling his white fluffy curls. "Can we go home now? I'm exhausted, and I'm pretty sure you are too."

"I am, I very much am. Tucker, I'm not bothering to ask for the board back. It runs on solar energy so just head straight home with it, ok? It'll be charged back up in the morning."

Tucker gave a thumbs up and slipped his helmet down properly, covering his face. Standing up with the magnetic boots locked into place on the board, Tucker rose in a wake of neon blue light from beneath the board and took off with a loud cheer. A whole day at Fentonworks was more than enough time to perfect an outfit, as far as Danny was concerned.

The ghost boy wrapped an arm around Sam's middle on his uninjured side and they took to the sky, soaring straight to her house. Danny set Sam down on the balcony of her room and stuck his head in. A whistle escaped him and he gave a thumbs up. "Sam, one day we have got to hang out at your place."

"My folks aren't entirely jazzed with me hanging around you since you 'attract dangerous attention from monsters' so yes, you must come over and hang out with me. And you must do it soon." Sam ruffled his hair again and Danny huffed, pulling his hood over his head. "You can't escape me and you know it!"

"We'll see about that," he laughed, sucking in a breath when he felt the laugh shake his side. "Stop being funny."

"Unlike some people, it comes naturally to me."

"Rude." Danny waved and backed up. "Night Sam!" Danny soared into the night sky and angled himself toward downtown. Once he was as close to Agatha's place as he dared be, Danny set his feet down on the ground and let the world come back into focus, heat rushing into him. Never before had he regretted a decision more than that one, and before he'd even hit the ground Danny was a ghost again. "Owowowowowowow. Pain, very much pain, I will not be doing that again."

Once the echoing waves of pain died down to a throbbing ache once more, Danny pulled himself into the air and slipped out of the way of every atom moving around him, letting it move through him and watching the world bleed into vague green shapes outlined in extreme indigo light. "I doubt Agatha even minds if I go in there and no one ratted her out yet so I'm probably safe."

Poking his head through the wall, Danny looked around until he saw the only in focus sight near him. Agatha floated in the kitchen, pulling the ether around her into her hands and molding it into food to wrap and put away in the fridge. Danny floated over quietly and cleared his throat. She spun around, eyes wide and Danny smiled. "Hi there. Sorry to uh interrupt but I may or may not be in need of giving that healing food thing a try. Maybe it won't work on a human, but any extra energy will help I'm sure."

"Oh of course child!" Agatha spun the indigo light into a sloppy joe and handed it to Danny, who immediately chowed down on it. The best part of not needing to breathe as a ghost was that he had no reason to stop inhaling his food. Agatha watched in anticipation as Danny focused on the layers upon layers of trilling harmonies, the ringing of countless bells that echoed within Danny's center of being, and felt his wound close up like Sam's had. "Oh my."

"Thank you, so much." He beamed up at the ghost and gave a thumbs up. "I should be able to manage with this much myself. Uh, Skulker will be gone for however long it takes for him to rebuild his body. He did a lot of damage and I just. Couldn't let it slide."

"I see," Agatha said, her gloved palms flat against each other. "Well, I won't hold that against you dear, no one deserves to be hunted like an animal the way Skulker hunts his targets. I'll ask that you not make a habit of that though, it gets you a reputation." She wagged a finger and Danny nodded, feeling heavy. "Now, head on home so that you can rest. Food is important, but getting enough sleep is just as important after you do something as strenuous as fighting Skulker."

"I'll be sure to do that." Danny smiled and waved, pulling himself back toward the wall. "Have a nice night Ms. Reece."

"Have a good night Danny."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's how you fuck up a guy like Skulker. Any questions, comments, thoughts about the story or the world, or even simply souls or other such offerings for our Ghost King Danny, please leave them in the comment section down below and I thank you for them!


	9. Emotional Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teen Unaware of how Weird Family is, Local Goth Decides To Go All In and Learn Magick, Exhausted Teens Do Fun Dumb Teen Stuff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI happy holiday seasons everyone! Put on your caps and enjoy the image of a grumpy Danny stuffed into a holiday sweater that he WILL burn later. A commenter mentioned last chapter that these dorks deserve a break to rest and I frankly agreed. Hope you enjoy!

It was the day after they’d taken down Skulker, and Tucker _had_ to collect up the armor. Danny helped him, of course, and he flew home with some help from his favorite ghost boy. They landed in Tucker’s room, and Tucker gave Danny a hug as soon as the suit was set down. Danny returned to his warmer flesh and blood self and hugged him back before they got to work searching for a port to plug Tucker’s laptop into. Thankfully even the dead respected the U in USB and they manage to connect. Before long, however, Tucker’s mind wanders from his code-breaking program that’s now hard at work with Skulker’s head and to his situation with Sam. And considering what all he’d learned about Danny’s family so far, he might as well ask. “Danny do you have access to transparent solar panels?”

“Yeah, all the windows at Fenton Works are solar panels - I think they run at uh 50% efficiency. Why?”

“Danny, that’s like, the exact last piece I need for my solar-powered car design.” Tucker was tempted to inform Danny of how amazing that fact was, but he knew Danny wasn’t a fan of being extraordinary, so he’d let it slide for now. “Now I just need some way of building it.”

“Well, you have the design itself saved right?”

“Yes…” Tucker wasn’t sure where this was going, but he was hopeful that it’d be a place he liked.

“We can just print out the design at my house?” Danny shrugged, as though that was obvious and the most simple thing in the world. “We have like, a pretty big 3D printer, it’s uh modular, and we use scrapped metal from junkyards that we liquified as filament. We can print a car pretty quickly.”

Danny was going to say something that made Tucker fall completely in love with him one of these days, the idiot. “Danny I _need_ you to take me to this 3D printer. Now.” Skulker’s head was left where they’d put it on his desk, the rest of the suit stuffed in Tucker’s closet, and the pair flew off to Danny’s house.

When they arrived at Fentonworks, they turned to one of the other buildings on the block and set down there, Danny taking the time to unlock the door and everything. “So this 3D printer you guys have…”

“Well, Dad calls it the Fenton Fabricator. See, there's a theory that went around a while ago when 3D printers and fabricators first started, it was the Recursive Loop Theory. It goes like this. You buy a 3D printer. Mid-range, sorta useful, but with enough detail and strength that you like it. But then you need something a bit more detailed. So you look online and you find a set of 3D models for a second printer. This one you can build on your machine, and with only some minor parts you can make the more detailed printer for a tiny fraction of what it would cost.” 

Danny took them to a set of stairs and Tucker was so focused on his friend he nearly missed all the art Danny’s ever done hanging all over the walls. 

“So, you can make more detailed parts. And you find designs for a bigger printer. It's modular and sorta rough, but it needs those detailed parts. So you can then build massive somewhat detailed pieces… and so you do. And now, with your 3 printers, you find designs to a fourth. Bigger, better, more detailed, it's another generation, and you can print it off your current designs. Boom, bam, rinse and repeat. Eventually, your diminishing returns drop till you can’t make a more detailed printer, but at that point, you have one hell of a machine, particularly if you have a couple of crazy hackers building your final design as a custom project. Course, it’s not quite that easy. We had to fabricate a lot of weird and unique bits for them in other ways - well, my folks and their friends in the Secret Scientists did anyway."

“So the Fenton Fabricator?”

“Is a massive, customized high detail 3D fabricator that can even print metal and glass, yes.” Danny turned on the lights as they entered a large underground workspace. Tucker saw the fabricator and felt he might’ve gone to heaven. It was a massive aquarium tank, easily twenty feet from corner to corner and at least eight feet tall. Above it, hanging like a mechanical spider on segmented green and red limbs with shiny metal joints and points, was a motorcycle sized 3D printing extruder. Tucker could see a set of lasers for dust printing, a pair of high-heat high-speed extruders for wires, several dozen smaller legs with colors and specific grades of wire, all of which fed up and around the room to spools of plastic and cylinders of dusted metal.

“There are hidden parts in the walls with directed gravity manipulators and some arms kept out of the way until needed for assembly-based stuff. I think Mom and Dad built a car or something down here recently. The canisters are all refilled completely.” Danny shrugged, moving around the lab and grabbing up papers - notes about what feeds to use, hints for setting things up. “I can help you connect up and plug in your stuff - though you’ll have to leave it here so that the thing can print. If you’re legit making a car here, it’ll take about 2 days to finish printing it out at all, let alone assemble.”

“Danny, after I finish with that, we are _so_ using this place for other projects together, do you understand me?” Tucker saw doors that likely lead off to other rooms in the lab and wondered just how Much of Fentonworks there was. “This is too amazing.”

“If you say so, bro. Here, let’s get started. I can help with setting up the print file.”

* * *

Sam had to say, going through the bs of school was beyond irritating when both of her friends were barred from the school until they could get around the weapons the Fentons were installing. Paulina’s gratingly loud personality was especially difficult to tune out that day, and Sam found herself feeling proud of her self control in not throwing something at the shallow cheerleading idiot when she started going on and on about the upcoming spirit week.

Once school was out, Sam grabbed the board that Danny apparently made for her after he finished Tucker’s, though she wasn’t sure how, and put on her helmet. New, magnetic boots planted firmly on the board, Sam pulled out her phone, put in the address of the Skulk and Lurk, and activated the Nav AI that Tucker had managed to make an app for to download. “One of these days Tucker is going to overwork himself into an early grave.” Shaking her head Sam took off into the sky, and no amount of gothic reputation could keep the smile off her face or prevent her from cheering. “Woooohoooo!” Who could possibly blame her? She was _flying_. There was nothing more awesome than this that she knew of.

When she arrived, Sam had her board hover itself up to the roof, where it was less likely to get snatched by someone who thought it’d be cool to snag a hoverboard. Walking into the store, Sam took off her helmet and grinned. The Skulk n Lurk was one part book store, one part poetry reading area, and one part coffee shop. It had the gothic, occult theme down pat with black, blue, and shades of purple being the only colors to be found around the store. Heading straight into the books section, Sam managed to flag down an employee and nudged him in the arm. “Nice mohawk, Chris, I see you’re branching out.”

Chris turned around, hair dyed a brilliant blue and his clothes all pastel shades of purple and grey with a bat-shaped nametag pinned on his chest. He smiled and elbowed her right back. “Yeah, just got it done the other day. How’re you holdin up, Sam? Parents still trying to push you into being a prep?”

“Such is my curse.” Sam sighed and leaned heavily on Chris while he laughed. “But, that’s not what I’m here for today. Think you can help me find some books on magick?”

“Cursing people is wrong, and will always go wrong for you, I hope you know that.”

Sam rolled her eyes, standing up straight. “It’s not for cursing anyone, Chris, it’s for something else.”

“Hitting that cheerleader with a love spell is not the way to go about getting over your crush on her.” Chris smirked and turned away from her, walking steadily while Sam scoffed and scowled at him.

“That’s gross on two fronts. A love spell sounds ridiculously creepy, and I _don’t_ have a crush on _Paulina_ of all people.” Sam made a gagging noise and Chris laughed yet again.

Ludicrous notions about cheerleaders aside, Chris lead Sam to a section about magick and left to go help another customer while Sam browsed. She held her hand up, letting her fingers brush over the spines of the books as she read their titles and stilled. There was a vibration, warm and far more humid than any bookstore should be and humming so much like Danny and Agatha and even that piece of trash Grovsner did when she was close. It was a feeling that she hadn’t really noticed until now that all of the ghosts she’d encountered shared, however few of those there were. The tiny hairs all over her arms and the back of her neck stood on end and Sam grabbed the book.

 _Roots, stems, rain, warmth, leaves, petals, heat, crushing cold, withering emptiness, life granting rain and growth_. Sam dropped the book and just barely bit off a loud swear, staring at the cover. Magick: The Life Blood of the Earth. “Well. Danny can see weird shit, I guess I can feel it. Being that close to the portal must’ve done something to me.” Picking up the book slowly, Sam waited for any weird feelings to hit her again. When none did, she grinned slowly. “Let’s see what I can do with that.”

* * *

Danny takes some of the time after fighting Skulker to relax at home, get his schoolwork done that was emailed to him, and figure out a plan for working around the school's new anti-ghost security system. It had been two days already and he was coming up blank. Of course, it's at dinner that Danny thinks to ask his parents. "Hey Mom, you said the Fenton Finder works by keeping track of a ghost's ectosignature, right? What is that, exactly?" Jazz, as she standardly did when Danny instigated ghost-themed rants, looked as offended as one might have had their mother been described with every cuss word in the dictionary. She stabbed her chicken alfredo while holding this look for 5 continuous seconds without blinking.

Mom smiled wide and ecstatic. "Well you see, Danny, an ectosignature is the frequency of electrical signals running throughout a ghost's body, shaping its form and directing its actions."

"Like brainwaves?"

“Exactly, hon!” Mom reached into her pocket and pulled out a macaroon, which Danny devoured immediately. “When a ghost manifests outside of the Ghost Zone, its ecto signature is a signal being broadcast from the Ghost Zone into our reality. Since ghosts are 4-dimensional constructs made of exotic matter that of which exists beyond our standard perceptive abilities, a ghost can receive this ectosignature from just about anywhere on Earth or beyond. Like the best cellular reception in the universe.”

“Like any signal though, an ectosignature can be tracked! And that signal can be disrupted and blocked!” Dad only spoke in exclamation points Danny realized some time ago. He waved his fork around in presentation at the blueprint that his mind had likely superimposed on the air next to him. “The Fenton Thermos™ uses charged ectoplasm and what I’ve coined as Fentonite to isolate any ectoplasmic mass contained inside of it from its corresponding ectosignature by creating a four-dimensional enclosure! The filthy ghost is still charged with the ectosignature though, there’s a centralized network of energy that allows the ghost to immediately take on its form after it’s released.”

“So the ghost is _conscious_ within the thermos?”

Mom shrugged. “As conscious as a ghost can be, sweety. It’s not an actual person or anything, just a static imprint of what used to be a person’s thoughts. Like an A.I.”

“The Fenton Finder™ used scanners specially made to detect ectosignatures that are on our satellites up in space! It’s also how our security system works, though that works off of scanners here in the house!”

"So is there a way to track down ghosts by their specific ecto signatures? If you can track the general signals maybe you can create a way to lock into a specific one."

"Mm, I suppose we could! That'd be useful for tracking down that scum that attacked you and friends! We've got the blueprints for the ecto signature scanner down in the lab somewhere if you wanna try the idea out, son!"

"Will do, Dad. I'll tell ya how it goes." Danny grinned around his chicken and pasta. He had a game plan now. 

After dinner, Danny raced downstairs to print out the blueprint from the computer - his father stacked the blueprints in an infuriatingly chaotic way that Danny hadn't the patience to sort through - and then ran through the door on the left. Behind it was a hallway into a tunnel, one that lead Danny to the alternative lab under the building right next to the house. Hopping into his wheely chair, Danny slid over the linoleum floor to his work table and laid down the blueprint.

"Alright, I can work with this. A signal can be tracked, and it can be isolated. Which means that My signal can be isolated and tracked specifically." A smirk crossed his face. "Which means the scanners can be set to ignore my signal. Perfect!"

Danny slid over to the laptop connected to a second Fenton Fabricator, glad that his parents were always thorough enough to make a back up of everything they did. "This should be done in no time. Then Sam can help me test it and Tuck can- speak of the devil." Danny whipped out his phone and hummed, tilting his head at the simple message his best friend had sent him. 

**FriarTuck** : Hey Dan, almost fin breaking the security in Sklkr's suit. Bout to crack this badboi open n make it mine. Muahahahaha! Hyd?

"Ugh, stars, I don't wanna think about that asshole." Danny shot back a quick reply and set his phone down, finding a notebook he typically kept around. Writing in a code only he, Tucker and Sam knew, Danny got everything down that he could. "Skulker has been a major set back in my plan to prove not all ghosts are evil to Mom and Dad, and a few other weird developments made themselves known. I can now see everything in the lower intensity ultraviolet spectrum 24/7 instead of having to concentrate, as well as the electrical currents running through everything; I can somehow see my emotional connections with people I'm close with and use those connections to influence their emotions as well as read them clearer than other aurae." He stopped, taking a breath and looking over what he'd just written. " _Mierda_ , ain't that creepy?" Danny pulled on his hair a bit while he wrote.

"Joining that on the list of creepy-ass things about Danny: I can reach across that link to everyone and pull on their love and affection and all that and use it to heal myself. Stars, that's such a gross way to look at everyone's care for me. Just a fucking- a bandaid? A free trip to the nurse in a minute?"

Turning back to the parts being made, Danny huffed and dragged his nails against his scalp a touch too roughly. "Physiological changes in my ghost occur when Tucker and Sam are in danger; Canines grow into fangs and according to Sam my voice starts to echo as though it's coming from everywhere. Thankfully a check in Tucker's mirror proves that the changes are temporary. Reaction to my temperament? On that note: being a psychoreactive exotic material, the ectoplasm that makes up my ghostly body reasonably reacts instantaneously to my emotions, but it seems to be enhancing them as well. It's either that or maybe puberty, but I have a feeling puberty doesn't make you violently angry at the slightest provocation and likely to turn any ghost you see into a splatter on the ground." Danny groaned, closing his notebook. "I fucking Executed Skulker. What the fuck? Why didn’t I just suck him into the thermos?"

A ding from his phone and Danny snorted. 

**GardeningClaws** : Hey Star boy, don't go angsting without us there to hug you. We will know and you will pay the price.

"And what price is that, being buried in a pillow fort?"

 **GardeningClaws** : do you know how many pillows I have in this house?? Do you think, like a fool, that I won't use them against you?

Danny laughed, sending a quick 'fair point' before heading to the door opposite the one into the house lab. Behind it was a room with rows of lockers, each holding three sets of suits. Danny didn't need them though. At the far end, there was a large octagonal metal rim, blast doors sealed shut within.

Opening it up to just the right coordinates, Danny watched the doors pull back and felt the building charge of the portal's startup. For a fraction of a second, Danny was filled with a bone-deep fear that gripped his entire body and held him stock still. With a thunderous crack, the fabric of space-time was folded around and torn, and Danny relaxed, staring out at an expanse of white and grey. Opening the blast door, he let the void fill him up and spread outward to chill his bones and freeze his veins. Skin blue, eyes and freckles green and his fluffy hair snow-white, Danny flew past the event horizon and gasped silently at the sight before him.

The moon is so much more beautiful when you can look with your own eyes instead of through the lens of a helmet visor.

* * *

Sam, smartest of the group that she was, called Danny and Tucker both to head to her house for a horror movie marathon. “After what we’ve been through, none of these B rate movies are gonna scare us.” It was so close to inarguably true that the boys both shrugged at their phones and headed on over. Danny came down from the sky in that space where everything was heat and impossible colors, everything around him highlighted in a panorama view that almost made him dizzy. Landing in an alleyway, Danny checked to make sure he didn’t see anyone around him and took a deep breath. He folded himself up, cold edges practically trapped within him tugged and bent until the brilliant moonlight that bled from his form retreated into the center of his chest, light and freezing cold as it hummed in an offbeat pulse next to his heart.

Pulling the hood of his jacket over his head, Danny jogged out of the alleyway and down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. He looked around the neighborhood properly and hummed, wondering how he never put together that Sam was rich when the address she’d given them ages ago was very obviously in the rich part of town. “Stars, we’re really just that oblivious aren’t we?” The stars in mind, Danny cast his gaze up and smiled at the full moon that greeted him, counting the tiny dots of the stars around it while he walked. Thankfully, his odd kaleidoscopic vision seemed to extend to his human form a bit and his foot froze mid-step as a car drove past him at an intersection. “Sweet mother of the gods, _why_ can rich people not drive right?”

When he got to the gates of Manson Manor, Tucker was there typing away at his phone. When he looked up Danny waved and grinned, pointing a thumb at the huge mansion behind the gate. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s just _so much_. Why does anyone need that much space? How do they keep it clean?”

“If I meet some butler named Alfred I’m going to eat your hat.”

“Are you sure you wanna make that bet, Danny? This is looking Batman-ish.”

The gate opened up before Danny could respond to that and instead, he nudged Tucker’s side before jogging toward the door. Sam was there, opening it before Danny could trip on nothing and faceplant into the mahogany or whatever expensive wood the door was probably made from, and he instead landed on a soft carpet. Tucker nudged his foot with his shoe and Danny groaned, resigned to simply laying there for the rest of his life. Two pairs of hands lifted him up from the ground however and Danny laughed, getting up properly.

“You can’t just let me wallow in my shame in peace, can you?”

“Of course not,” Sam scoffed. “If you’re going to be ashamed, I have to be there to make sure it’s appropriate. Now, c’mon!” Sam dragged Danny down a few halls, and up some stairs, followed closely by Tucker.

“I need to make a map of this place so we don’t get lost the next time we come to visit,” Tucker muttered, and Danny nodded. When Sam opened the door she was headed for she let Danny go and grinned at them like a cat that’d eaten the canary. Walking in, Danny felt his jaw drop and took a moment to soak in what he was seeing. “You have an entire movie theater in your house?”

“I know, it’s grossly excessive and we absolutely don’t need it, but-”

“Sam, what the heck are you talking about?” Danny waved a hand in the goth’s face and snorted when she swatted at him. “This is awesome! We can marathon every Dead Teacher movie here and it’ll be like when we went to see it in the actual theaters but _better_!” Danny pulled down his hood and hopped over one of the chairs - of which there were two whole rows - and plopped himself into the soft cushioned seat with a laugh. “The only thing that could make this room better would be if you had movie snacks.”

“Well, good thing I have a popcorn machine right back there full of fresh popcorn, a cotton candy machine, and ordered us pizzas.” Sam grinned, sitting next to Danny with a bowl in hand full of greasy buttery popcorn, and Tucker sat on his right. “What should we watch first?”

Halfway into Dr. Sleep, the pizza arrived and three laughing teens had to pause the movie and pull themselves together from the heap of giggles that they’d become. “Oh, oh stars, that _hurt_ , laughing so much hurts!” Danny leaned on Tucker while Sam leaned on him, the bowl of popcorn practically forgotten next to Tucker. After a few minutes, Danny took a deep breath and patted his friends on the back. “I can grab the pizza - I can fly, so unlike you two I can actually go and be back before the things are cold.” Before either friend could protest, Danny let the shimmering void of silvery dark cold spread out from the center of his chest to every hair on his body in a flash of light. He slipped through Sam and Tucker like water through the air and flew off toward the red aura of the pizza guy, diving to transform behind the front door when he appeared outside. In just a moment he was back inside and setting three pizza boxes down on the snack table. “I see we got ourselves a meat-lovers for Tuck, a veggie everything for Sam, and-” Danny gasped. “A dragon’s tongue pizza for me! Aww, Sam~”

“Oh stuff it you goof,” Sam said as she and Tucker grabbed slices and plates. “I just knew that you’d complain your pizza isn’t spicy enough unless it has ghost peppers, reaper peppers and every other kind of spice known to man and dolphin on it.”

Tucker rolled his eyes, already scarfing down his first slice. “Dolphin? Really?”

“Dolphins are the closest animals to humans in behavior and observed intellect, Tucker.” Danny took the time to go through three slices of pizza while Sam ranted about how dolphins might as well be classified as non-human people before pointing accusatorily at her.

“There is nothing wrong with my sense of taste, thank you. Anyone with a strong enough tongue can handle this pizza, Sam.” Danny took a bite to emphasize his point and smirked when he was flipped off. “I’ve just got the strongest stomach here.”

“ _Excuse you?_ ”

“Unlike you, I can eat veggies without my stomach declaring a mutiny.”

“Um, go fuck yourself? That was the lowest of all low blows, I am utterly _betrayed_!” Tucker covered his forehead with the back of his arm and half fell backward. “Truly, my trust has been shattered by mine own brother, how could you? And I’ll have you know that the amount of capsaicin you consume is well beyond what any human being should have in their body.”

“Funny, I’m pretty sure I’m not human.” Danny paused mid-chew, ignoring the look of disgust on Sam’s face over the two of them talking around their food. “I wonder… what smaller changes like that might be going on because of my ghost? Like, regular puberty is already horrible enough but now I’ve got like, ghost puberty to deal with.”

“First of all, ghost wise, you’re baby.” Danny pouted at Tucker, feeling mildly offended. “You haven’t even been half-dead for a whole year yet, you’re baby.”

“Tucker, can you be reasonable for one moment?” Danny nodded, gesturing to Sam, who was clearly the only one with her head on straight between them. “Danny is _always_ baby, not just because of his ghost.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Danny rose up in front of the movie screen, less crossed in the air as he frowned down at his friends. “I am offended, I am revolted, I dedicate my life to our lord and savior Jesus Christ and _this_ is the thanks I get?”

“I wonder,” Sam said loudly as she walked toward his pizza box. “What it would taste like if I put cotton candy on your pizza?” Danny dove for his pizza box, nearly crashing into Sam as he grabbed it up and flew toward the ceiling. He flipped upside down and stood with his feet to the ceiling, grinning down at his friends. Carefully opening his box he took out a slice and stopped.

“Sammy that is a wonderful question!” Gravity shifted, reasserted itself in the correct direction, and Danny flipped with it, landing in front of the cotton candy machine. He dipped his pizza slice into it and smirked at the despaired wail of his friend while he ran away from her, munching away at his unholy pizza slice. “This is so sad, Alexa-”

“You don’t think I’d have _Alexa_ in my home, do you? First you defile my cotton candy, now you insult my common sense? Do me a favor and parish.”

“Been there, done that.”

“As amazing as all that is, I was wondering something about you, Danny.” Danny flew over to Tucker, landing on his shoulders with a snicker. “So like, can you do that thing from the movie? Like, turn your head all the way around like an owl?”

A wide grin spread over Danny’s face and he set his food down on the table, before pulling the void up and out and around himself. Bright silver light illuminated Tucker and cast odd shadows on his face. _To think about later._ Danny turned his head slowly, cautious of being wrong, and almost stopped when he heard the _pop_ of the joints in his neck. Still, he kept going until he was looking at Sam’s gaping face right behind him. He raised a hand to give her a thumbs up and winced at the sound of more popping joints - though, fascinatingly enough… “None of this hurts at all.”

“Well now I gotta see you spider-walk up the walls, that’s just the natural result of you showing off like this, Danno.” Turning his head the rest of the way around, Danny saw Tucker’s phone pointed at him and snorted. “Dude this is _wicked_!”

“Oh my gods, we have to time you, hold on.” And like that, Danny was doing laps around the walls and ceiling, reversed on all fours while Sam timed him and Tucker recorded. When he dropped back down to the two rows of seats, Danny crossed his legs behind him with a hum.

“Anything else y’all wanna test?” Tucker raised his hand and Danny let his gaze slide from Tucker himself to the brilliant yellow-gold-grek air around him. “I’m going to regret hearing out this question, aren’t I?” Tucker nodded, his grin widening and the grek in his aura growing brighter. Danny sighed and pointed at his brother.

“Can you possess people? Cause that would be pretty fuckin cool.” Tucker T posed as if that would help Danny with the wave of discomfort that crashed over him at the idea. “How would you know? Go ahead, try me. See if you can like, take me over.”

Danny drew the darkness back into his chest, warmth and the beat of his heart and the weight of gravity tugging relentlessly against him like countless invisible chains made themselves known to him. Digging in his pocket, Danny pulled out a coin, looking at Tucker with as much seriousness on his face as possible. “Heads I tell you to yeet your PDA into the cotton candy, tails I try to possess you.” Danny flipped the quarter and caught it in his open palm. He took in a deep breath through his nose, and let it out the same way. “Shut.”

Slipping back into the void, Danny stared at his Tposing best friend and considered just how he was supposed to do what he had asked. The only thing that made any sense, of course, was to slide even deeper into the void. Light and sound and even the air circulating through the room all faded away and the world shifted like a gradient scale from Xtreme Indigo to a deep dark blue sprinkled with green that lit up the empty world in bands, rivers, and threads that Danny could’ve stared at for the rest of his life and probably never grown tired of. The only constants were the gold and green aurae at the ends of silver threads that shone like solid moonlight. Danny dove for the golden light and dipped a hand in where he guessed Tucker’s head was. The silver thread practically yanked him in, and Danny sank into a desert of yellow and glittering light.

In the next instant, he was blinking unfamiliar eyes, falling out of a dumb pose he hadn’t taken, stumbling on legs longer than he was used to and warmer than he’d been in months. “Holy shit.” Danny held out his - Tucker’s hands and turning them over each other again and again. He took a few testing steps forward and back, turning and stretching every way he’d ever seen Tucker move, and felt a laugh bubble out of hi-Tuck’s mouth. “Sam holy shit!”

Sam was staring at Tucker-Danny like he was the most out of this world thing she’d ever laid eyes on and she wasn’t sure how to react to him. The cheer of figuring out yet another ability dimmed at the sight of her expression and what might’ve been horror was building itself up in his chest. Then Sam schooled her expression and pointed at him. “You sound the way you do when the two of you are speaking in unison.”

“I feel like I’m wearing a costume that doesn’t fit right, I’ll be honest about that. Stars, Tucker’s vision is horrible.”

“Alright, that voice thing is actually getting annoying, can you like, leave him now?” A moment of silence passed, the room growing incredibly small and Sam stepped closer. “Danny, you can leave Tucker’s body now, right?”

“Gimme a second, Sam, I didn’t know I could go into him in the first place.” Danny huffed and closed his eyes. He focused on what was different and wrong about being in Tucker’s body instead of his own, thought about floating upward to the surface of a large body of water, the moon coming to his mind’s eye and he reached for it. There was a solid kick at the edge of his shadows, golden sands rising up and filling the empty space to push him up and out toward the moonlight and-

Danny flopped onto the ground face first, sensing a trend of him faceplanting on Sam’s floor, and Tucker let out a loud gasp. “Holy balls, that was _weird as_ **_fuck_ **!” Danny flipped around onto his back, letting his own familiar warmth and heartbeat fill his senses before he looked up at Tucker and found him wiggling his fingers and toes. “It was like blacking out or something. I had the weirdest dream where I was like, I dunno, made of fire or something?”

“It was a lot of weird, hard to describe feelings on my end but mostly like a suit that doesn’t fit right. Like, I know what my body feels like and that wasn’t mine, ya know?” Sam and Tucker nodded and while Danny knew they had absolutely no idea what he meant, it was relieving all the same. Standing up, Danny reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the scanner he’d printed earlier. “By the way, I made something that’ll help me get back into school.”

Tucker, without missing a beat, said, “That sounds like a horrible evil device.” Sam snorted and Danny nodded. “What does it do?”

Danny launched into an explanation of what he’d learned about ectosignatures and his idea for tricking the security system at school. “Also,” Danny added when it came to mind, “the car should be done printing in my basement by now.”

“Wait, you not only finished designing it but also started making it?” Sam looked between them with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean printing?”

“The Fenton Fabricator™ is a giant, modular, high detail 3D printer that can make complex metal technologies - like our hoverboards. The first 3D printed car took a couple of days and it wasn’t as complicated as this so I guessed about 48 hours.” Danny shrugged. “Probably done by now.”

“Isn’t that cool?” Tucker practically had stars in his eyes. “We can build _anything_ in there, Sam!”

“Before that, we gotta get this ecto signature of Danny’s recorded." Sam held up the scanner and Danny nodded. Things had to happen in the right order or things would go wrong.

Danny reached inside of himself and pulled the dark, endless space between space that rested within him out to wrap around him like a cool, relaxing blanket. The extreme indigo of the world rose to an even more brilliant blue and purple that blended together and unwove from each other and wrapped around everything. Tucker shone from within with gold that glittered like desert sands and Sam was wreathed in the viridian green of the forests. The threads between them were silver and thick as though woven from many. "I never need to take drugs cause all I need to do to get a trip is go ghost. I swear."

"Yeah, well, I think I have the reading on you right here. Tucker, can you make any sense of this?" Tucker rolled over and stared at the data on the Fenton Finder remake. After a moment of silence, Tuck started tapping away at his PDA ferociously. "I'm gonna guess that means yes."

"I can record this signal and have a filter to keep the school's system from recognizing you as a threat by tonight. Think we can break in and do it then?"

"Probably," Danny shrugged, flipping a few times in the air. "Ishiyama probably had them set the security system to an activation button or lever or verbal input. They wouldn't want them to make something automatic in case a ghost was too close to a student."

"Fair. Tomorrow night then?" Tucker grinned as Danny tucked that blanket of not so empty empty space back into the very center of his everything and flopped onto his seat.

"Sooner I can tell my family we beat Skulker the better. I don't like worrying them like this." Ever since his Spirit Vision or whatever got turned permanently on, Danny could feel the undercurrent of anxiety that ran through his family. It made his skin crawl with the itch to make them all feel better and left a bitter taste on his tongue.

"Agreed, I can only keep this info from my parents for so long." Sam sighed, rolling her eyes. With a grin she handed the scanner fully over to Tucker and ran a hand through Danny's hair, messing it up as much as she could.

Danny swatted away Sam's hand after a moment and sank further into the soft cushiony seat. "Your chair is eating me, Sammy."

"You've been getting a healthier amount of meat on you, so yeah it might be." Tucker was steadily getting engrossed in his task and Danny knew they had precious few seconds before he was completely lost to them so he decided now was a good time to be a dick. 

“So like, when the first hoverboard exploded and I put up a forcefield on a reflex we completely skipped over that cause of hyper-focus but like. Should we talk about that?"

"You have protective instincts," Tucker mumbled, "and ghost stuff reacts to the deeper parts of your mind right? So it's just you defending someone you care about."

"Which reminds me." Sam poked Danny in the sides until he was squirming and giggling to get away. "You're keeping like, a journal of all the things you can do right?"

"Mostly notes on what I learned about ghosts in general, like a bullet point list of the stuff that happened with Agatha and Skulker, and stuff but yeah. I need to add ‘owl neck’ and ‘possession’ to my list of Things I Can Do."

“And what, pray tell, is on that list?”

"I can turn intangible or invisible, defy- no, actually, with what happened at the zoo I guess I can influence gravity, I can see all the radiation in the world, which is a trip lemme tell ya, I can apparently make a wall of ectoplasm?" Tucker and Sam were staring at him for a long beat of silence before both were tackling Danny and pulling him into a big group hug. “I know, I’m awesome, but so are you guys and you should celebrate it.”

“Yeah, I am pretty awesome,” Tucker said with a grin. “You guys are lucky to know me. I feel I deserve a reward for the amazingness I bring to this group.” Tucker was promptly dropped by Sam onto the floor and Danny laughed.

“Another cool thing you can do is heal yourself and other people.” Sam poked Danny in the side until he was squirming away from her in that unreal state of being, slipping through her fingers like the space between air and flopped onto Tucker’s lap before solidity came back to him. “That’s probably one of the coolest powers you have.”

“One day, Tucker is going to copy everything I can do, but with technology.” Danny poked Tucker a couple of times and got his hand swatted away for his trouble. “He’s already copied my language-”

“Spanish doesn't belong to you just because your dad is Mexican, Danny, try again.”

“And now he’s tryna say what’s mine isn’t even mine, can you believe this guy?” Danny didn’t even try to hold in his laughter now, waving a hand emphatically in Tucker’s face. “Next he’ll say I’m not the greatest ghost fighter in the world-”

“Your Mom.”

“Or the first boy to step foot on the moon-”

“Neil Armstrong - also, did you just say you walked on the m-”

“Or the unthinkable, like I’m not the very first Fenton that’s gonna be built like a brick house.”

“No no, you can’t just talk your way out of this one, Danny, you were on the _moon?_ ” Ah, Danny loved riling up his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Opinions? Effigies of Phantom to pour energy into? Videogames to offer to our trio of geeks and freaks? leave it all in the comments and have an awesome day!


	10. Nocturnal Rumble, Mechanical Songs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teens Break Into Highschool and Fight Slime Monster, Self Esteem Issues Galore, Worried Parents Scold Stubborn Hacker, Strange Tech Geek Has Epiphany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is up everybody, I'm here with a fun new chapter I hope you enjoy!

Flying with their hoverboards to the school was both insanely fun and much easier than Danny expected - once Sam and Tucker were drilled on how to fly them properly. They landed on the roof, Danny slid them all into that space between spaces where the real was illusion and the unseeable was reality and they sank down into the school easily. Slowing their descent with a tug on the dark strings of gravity, Danny dropped everyone back into their natural solid state and waited for Sam and Tucker to take a deep breath. "I'm wondering if I even need to breathe cause I didn't have a problem with air passing through my whole body instead of in and out of my lungs."

"Speculation later," Sam said with a hand over Danny's mouth. "Let's go, alright? We need to find the security office, which should be this way." The goth lead the group and Tucker pulled out the USB with the data they needed on it.

"Why do you know where that is, Sam?"

"C'mon, Tucker, you do after school stuff in theater, you know how boring it is to wait for clubs to start. I just wandered around a bunch cause it's healthier than idling with some game."

"So you walked while playing a game?"

"Oh shut up," Sam rolled her eyes, nudging Tucker with her elbow. Once they got to the security room door, Sam reached for her pocket before pausing and turning to Danny. "I brought my lock pick for nothing when you can just walk us through the door."

"Why do you know how to pick locks?" Danny examined the door and pressed his hand on it. He could see the strings that wove together to make it, vibrations slow compared to the ones in the air. Curious, Danny plucked one of the threads and watched as the door became as solid as air. Tucker and Sam walked right through but Danny could see the door settle back into its proper state after just a moment. Danny slid into that breathless darkness beyond the door entirely and walked into the room, dropping into corporeality's warmth to see Tucker's PDA jacked into the main computer and pulling up the details on the Fenton tech installed.

Tucker's foot was tapping as he examined the layout of the security system and frowned. His fingers flew over the keyboard and the deeper he delved the less he liked. "Alright good news: I can get it done. Bad news: gotta shut down the entire system for a whole five minutes to do it, and that's a pretty long time for it to be down in case something attacks us now."

"What are the odds of something attacking us right now, Tucker?" The geek arched a disbelieving eye brow at Sam, who shrugged with a sigh. "Point taken. How about this? I stay here with you and Danny patrols the halls for a ghost attacking? He can sense them, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"Great as a point as that is, if I just close my eyes I can look around for a ghost right from here. Do it Tuck, I'll know if anything comes for us." Tucker nodded and got to work on his update of the system, inserting the USB after a frustrating fumble with it. Danny closed his eyes and looked around with more than his limited human senses. Electrical currents ran all over the school to keep the Air Conditioning running right, or as right as a high school could get it, and the power stored in the lasers hidden all over the school lit up like tiny lamps in the shadows surrounding them. But then the computer went dark and Danny felt a tug in the back of his head, pulling him toward an empty spot in the world.

There, off to the side, Danny could see a gap, a void where the snapping threads of electricity and heat should've been. He let that tingling emptiness build up in his center and spread outward, until it blanketed every atom of his being and the faint and distant chorus of Starsong echoed in the back of his mind. "We've got company. I'll go and chat, see if we can get through a ghost encounter without fighting first."

"First time for everything Danny," Sam encouraged - or at least he thought she was trying to encourage him - and Danny followed a current he guided to the source of that blank spot, where light and heat and power collapsed inward. When he got closer, Danny saw what looked to be an office and a few framed pictures of depressed teens with an overly perky ginger woman. He didn't have time to linger on that, though, because a green blob with arms and bright red eyes was staring at him. Danny waved with a smile.

"Hi there." The creature turned to stare at Danny and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then a maw of razor sharp teeth was bared his way and a guttural, bestial snarl hit his ears and Danny had to move as fast as he could. A clawed hand slashed at his side and Danny sucked in a hissed cry as the jumpsuit gave and his nicked skin was exposed. "Well fuck you too then."

Raising the wrist ray Danny caught the thing in the shoulder with a shot before it rolled out of the way and punched him in the gut, waves of pain spreading out as the fucking stretchy arm pulled back. Grabbing onto that rubbery green goo, Danny jabbed at the creature's center when he was yanked close enough. Unfortunately it opened up a hole in itself and Danny's fist sailed through that hole harmlessly. His arm was trapped in goop and the blob roared in his face, encompassing Danny's body and lunging into a wall, slamming Danny against it and ringing his head like a gong.

While Danny tried to get his bearings within the slime monster he felt it turn and something inside of him rang out in horror. He looked, past the monster and walls, and saw it looking in Sam and Tucker's direction. A bubbling fury boiled in Danny's chest when the blob started moving toward them, and the ghost boy reached inside of himself past the shows and whispering dark void, reaching for the light that filled the shadows and pulled it into himself and let it build and build up until every inch of his body shone like a star. Bright green and silver light poured out of Danny from every molecule of his body, sending the goo monster in every direction to splatter on the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Danny hovered there for a moment, taking deep superfluous breaths and pulling the strands of crackling pale light to his fingertips. Silver gave way to green and shined through his glove and Danny stared at it in awe. "Holy shit!" A fist collided with his face, knocking Danny into a chair. He groaned and raised a hand, cold light gathering until it burned brighter than a torch and flew from his palm to turn a chunk of the monster's arm into green vapor. "Back the fuck off flubber, I'm packing heat!"

Blank red eyes narrowed at him and Danny rose to his feet with his fists in front of his face, glowing green with wisps of white at the edges like smoke. The monster snarled at him, countless predatory roars and howls layered upon each other in a headache-inducing din before flinging itself back through the wall behind it and quickly leaving Danny's sight. Danny moved to chase after the thing and found that his body didn’t agree with that idea. “Fuck.”  _ Great, ok, pain. No more talking, though the world shall mourn my silence. _ Danny flew slowly back to his friends, on the alert for the blob of ectoplasm, and flopped onto Sam’s back when he got into the security room. Sam started and aimed her wrist ray at him before seeing that it was just him.

“Gods, I hate you sometimes. Are you ok? You would’ve laughed by now if you were.” Sam looked down and watched Danny’s hands moving, and frowned. “A blob did this to you?”  **It was a smart blob** _. _ “That says something about you, genius boy.”  **Dig the knife in why don’t you?** “Left it at home. Tucker, how’s the program going?”

“One full minute left.” Tucker spun around in his chair, Wrist Ray™ whirring up and ready to fire. “So a sentient blob monster was hangin out in an office at school. Wonderful. What next, Cthulu decides to take a nap in Lake Eyre and we have to go and deal with him?”

**Don’t tempt fate, Tucker** , Danny signed.  **We might actually have to deal with that after what we’ve done to those ectopi.**

“That is both an exciting and depressing thought. How are we gonna deal with Cthulu?” To answer Sam’s question, Danny stood up and pulled a bit of heat and light to his hand, and it glowed brighter and brighter until a ball of ectoplasm burned in the palm of his gloved hand. “I’m not trying to be as blind as Tucker, Danny, please put that away. Thank you. That as fucking awesome! What, you can shoot plasma out of your hands now?”

**There is a tiny portal to the Ethereal Realm in the center of my ghost, where my consciousness is stored, and I can pull extra ectoplasm out of it to burn and attack with apparently.** Danny tilted his head and added,  **I think that’s how our more effective weapons work. Dad only made so many rifles so far.**

“You know what? Good. I’m glad he didn’t make too many of those,” Sam said with a shudder. “Imagine him selling that technology to the military so that they’d be armed against ghosts. I don’t wanna know what would happen if we had that kind of power enmass.”

Before uncomfortable truths about their home could be brought up further, the computer screens all lit up and Tucker spun around to check on them. “Looks like everything is set up, and Danny can come back to school. Makes it a lot less lonely for us.” Tucker stood up and stretched. “The robotics club just can’t keep up with me sometimes.”

**Awesome. Can we go now? I think I can fix myself up back at home, I have a first aid kit in my workshop.**

“Wait, you have your own workshop?” Tucker lunged at Danny, who hissed and slipped around his fingers to hover out of reach. “Sorry. But for real, you have a workshop? Since when? Why have I not known about this?” Danny shook his head and chuckled, then clutched as his chest in throbbing pain.  _ I better not have to take off my binder for this, or I’m gonna shake the thermos when I catch that thing. _ Reaching up to touch the ceiling, Danny grabbed onto the thread of energy running through the concrete and tried to pull it into him. The line of electricity snapped at his fingers and zapped him to the floor, bringing a keening whine from his throat as the pain radiated all over his body and the hand that had reached out looked to be glitching out, morphing into a dark swirling mass of cold.

Past the ringing in his head and blood - ectoplasm? - rushing through his ears, Danny could feel himself being lifted up and carried out of the room. He did his best to make that easier, unweaving the shadowy tendrils of gravity pulling on his body, and soon it was just Tucker’s familiar and warm hands holding him up like a balloon. While Sam was working on the lock between barely opened doors so they could get out the old fashioned way, Danny pulled those lingering shadows back together until they were his hand again. But then his other hand glitched and he groaned in frustration. Looking all around, Danny sucked in a sharp breath and reached down to tap Tucker’s Wrist Ray™, which had the other boy whirling around with it aimed.

Tucker fired off a ray at the ghost, who snarled at him for burning off an arm, and swiped out a claw at Tucker. Danny pulled on the power inside of him and pushed it out of his still stable hand, building a wall of green around them that the claw smashed into, shattering it and causing Danny’s legs to dissolve. Tucker fired off another shot that pushed the blob back and shouted. “¡Tíranos hasta el techo!” Danny sucked in a sharp breath and concentrated. His lower half was dissolved into a nebulous cloud of shadows beneath him but he had both hands, and now he was grabbing up Sam and Tucker in his arms and pulling them through the door and up. He dropped back into solid space and saw Tucker and Sam calling their boards to them, and when he felt Tucker solidly on stable ground, Danny’s vision went dark, and the last thing he saw was the light of his transformation and Tucker’s chest in his face.

_ Unraveled and broken down and broken free into yet another star among the endless diamond sky. He can see it, the threads connecting every constellation. Chamaeleon calls to him, and he can see the kaleidoscope of flames weaving between the stars, crackling and vibrating in harmony to sing the most beauteous song. Just beyond it, he faintly sees the tangle of verdant greens that wove themselves with shadows into his friend. And she was not beyond the stars but before them, before him, and she was calling out to him and that was right, he was needed on the ground. He can reach out and dance among the stars another time, he knows they will be there for him, as they have always been there for him. It takes an eon, but mere seconds too, for Danny to remember how he is supposed to fit into the small conf _ ines of his body. He holds up his hand, turns it this way and that. Is this his? How has he ever considered himself something so… so small, so simple and well-defined?

“Danny? Danny, can you hear me?” He turned to Sam’s voice and reached a hand out, gently gripping her shoulder and nodding with a small smile. “Thank gods! Danny, are you ok? Can you speak?”

Danny tugged gently on that  **care concern help love** that came through his bond to Sam and guided it to his jaw and chin. Letting out a sigh and snapping back to reality he nodded again. “Fornax, Sam that hurt. What happened? I passed out after Tucker got his board under him.”

“That blob thing attacked us while I was picking the lock, and Tucker got you to pull us out so we could get to our boards. Once you blacked out - bleeding, by the way, your head had been busted open - Tucker and I shot the thing until it left. When we got here, I started working on you while Tucker worked up a convincing lie to tell your parents.” She pointed at the door. “He’s right outside, but that’s as close as he can get without having a breakdown.” Danny nodded and slowly got to his feet. “You know that’s a dumb idea, right?”

“Isn’t that like, my middle name?” Danny chuckled. “I need to make sure Tucker is alright. And uh, Sam? Where’s my-” Sam handed over his binder and Danny smiled, slipping it into that in-between space and letting it solidify around him. 

“Thankfully you don’t have a broken rib or that might just make it worse.” That was true. Danny easily could’ve been making his wounds worse with the constricting force on his ribs. Glancing down at himself, Danny tried to look just sideways of the world like he did when looking for ghosts, but when he did all he saw was his phantom jumpsuit. Huffing a breath he shook his head. 

“I don’t feel like my chest is hurting much so I should be good.” Danny walked out of the door and saw Tucker sitting next to it. "Tucker, bro, thanks for saving my ass back there. Heard you did a great job flying, keeping me on the board And shooting the evil blob monster."

Tucker snorted, setting down his PDA. "That's cause I'm TF for Too Fine at a lot of things. Coulda done better by programming a remote activation for the security and lighting the thing up with it though."

"Surf lessons and videogames can't help you prophesy the future, Tuck." Tucker scoffed, shaking his head.

"No, my inherent genius does that. Calculating the odds."

Danny cocked a brow at him, unseen since Tucker was staring at a wall. "Oh, a gambler I see. Did the loot crates get to you? Do you need an intervention? Is it like the coffee thing?" Danny put his hand on Tucker’s shoulder, gently squeezing as he spoke.

Tucker finally looked at Danny, expression and tone flat. “You literally learned how to make the highest caffeine content cold brew coffee possible and drink it daily, there is no room for argument there Danny."

"I remember you helping him, Tucker." Sam sat next to the geek and nudged his arm

“Your point is?"

"You might be addicted to gambling and caffeine but we definitely can help Tuck." Danny and Tucker laughed, Sam and Danny wrapping their arms around Tucker’s shoulders in a group hug that was only somewhat awkward.

"Seriously though, Tucker, you did perfectly fine. I dunno how you manage to do all of what you do."

"It's how I'm gonna kick your ass in videogames one day."

Danny smirked. “I'll record it."

"I will destroy you, both of you know that." Sam turned her head up, looking all the world like the quern of destruction they knew she could be.

“We will conquer! Right, Tuck?"

"Yeah!" The boys pumped their fists in the air and all three of them broke down into a fit of laughter. They disentangled and got up, Danny wincing at the aches exasperated by sitting like that.

“Alright guys, let’s head to sleep and then like, tell Danny’s parents we beat Skulker and that’s why he’s all roughed up?” Everyone agreed with Sam’s idea - they usually did - and headed up to Danny’s room to pass out for several hours.

_ Shadows illuminated from within by starlight collected over countless eons swirl like smoke around him, letting him see the stars themselves weave together into beautiful shapes and beings just on the edge of imaginable. He can feel it, past the cold shadows in his mind, the fire in his soul that he can pull out, weave it with his shadows to make something  _ **_new_ ** _ if only he knew how. If only he dipped his brush into that well of fire and plasma and life within him and painted the empty air with it. He can, he just needs to move his fingers, the small heavy things they are _ .

“Danny, honey! Breakfast is ready!” Danny felt himself groan at the sound of his mother’s voice and buried his head further into someone’s arm. The air shifted, the door open, and Mom gasped. “Danny! Oh Danny, what happened?” Right, he’d forgotten he had a few bruises left by that blob.  _ It’s too early to remember things though. _ The  **concern worry fear** pinging in his head was enough to drag Danny to full consciousness and address the mounting panic his mother was diving into. 

“Good news is: I can go to school again. Bad news is: I can go to school again.” Danny propped his elbow on Sam’s side as his friends got up. “But uh, we turned the ghost to goop. I’m mostly fine. Only sting a little.” Danny groaned as he was shoved by Sam into Tucker who fell off the bed with his hand clasped around Danny’s shoulder. “What’s for breakfast?”

It turned out they were having waffles, eggs, and fruit salad for breakfast. Danny ate like there was no tomorrow, Tucker doing much the same while Sam went at s civilized pace.  _ Must be years of being in a ‘proper’ home. _ Cutting out Danny’s powers they regaled how they beat Skulker and Danny held up the thermos full of ectoplasm they removed from the zoo. “So we’re safe now.”

“I expect you to contact me and your father next time you do something so dangerous, young man!” Danny could see the blue bleeding through the yellow in her aura and nodded dutifully. Mom relaxed into her seat and sighed. “I’m proud of you for taking down your first ghost though!”

“Thanks, Mom. He was a pain in the Apus.” A spark of yellow that had him grinning. “It’s a constellation o-”

“Trust me, Danny, I know.” Mom kissed his head and Danny rambled away about the constellation anyway. “I’ll let the principal know that the ghost is dealt with. You three eat up and do whatever it is you kids do after fighting an evil monster.” Mom walked away and Danny looked over at his friends.

“What  _ do _ we do once we beat a bad guy?”  _ Other than worry about the next one. I’m almost starting to think Agatha is a rarity. _ “Cause I kinda wanna try beating Sam in something.”

“You poor naive boy, you think you can actually win.” Sam shook her head and patted Danny on his shoulder. “One day you’ll learn.”

“That day is not today!” Tucker shouted around his eggs. “To victory!”

“I’m painting something on the loser’s back, just so you know.” Danny waved his fork menacingly. “If you squirm from being tickled by the brush then I will have to start over.” The three of them laughed, finished up their breakfasts, and headed to the living room to start up a star finder videogame for Tucker to try and beat Sam in. Tucker lost and Danny tortured him with the cool ticklish strokes of his paintbrush while he put down a painting of a toucan on his side.

“As fun as kicking your butt has been, I think I’m gonna take off,” Sam said as she collected her helmet and new magnetized boots. They did just as much damage as her old combat boots, but these let her stick to her hoverboard. “And I swear if you make that a pun, Danny Fenton-”

“Take off into the sky and make sure not to crash land!” Danny was knocked back by his jacket being thrown at his face and Tucker wheezed out a laugh next to him. The door closed and Danny pounced, pinning Tucker to the floor. “And so the jester took down the friar, twas hardly a fight.”

Tucker pushed Danny up and off of him, rolling over to sit on his friend and crossing his arms. “I am triumphant and rose to the position of king! As such, I’m gonna see if I can crack that idiot’s code. Mind if I use your little workshop?”

“As long as you don’t try to leave through the portal to the moon, it’s perfectly cool dude. Best of luck with the metal head.” Danny squirmed free and headed up the stairs. “I just realized I can paint over those glow in the dark stickers on my ceiling now!”

Tucker shook his head and headed upstairs as well. He grabbed his stuff, got on his board, and flew home with a quick text to his parents to explain that he’d been at Danny’s house again. Tucker shook his head and headed upstairs as well. He grabbed his stuff, got on his board, and flew home with a quick text to his parents to explain that he’d been at Danny’s house again. Once Tucker reached his house, touching down in his backyard and pulling the hoverboard into the garage to idle, he headed upstairs immediately to grab Skulker's head. When he got to the ladder that leads up to his trapdoor, Tucker was met with his parents and upset faces. "Uh, hi?"

"Young man, why were you out all night without telling us first? That dangerous...  _ ghost _ thing is still out there, hunting you and your friends. Your leg has only barely gotten any better!" Wow, Tucker definitely needed that reminder of the dull throbbing ache that the Advil was masking just well enough for him to ignore on the way here. Moms were the best at unwanted reminders, Tucker was beginning to think. "You could have gotten hurt!"

"Well, would it make you feel better to know that I am 100% sure that Skulker isn't a problem anymore?"

"If you could give us proof of that, maybe." Dad frowned. "That doesn't excuse not telling us that you were staying the night with Danny. We were worried sick."

"If you let me up into my room I can show you that proof." They conceded and let Tucker climb his ladder, following up immediately after. "I've spent like half my nights at Danny's place anyway." Tucker rushed over to his closet and pulled the helmet to Skulker's suit out of the pile of clothes he'd been hiding it under.

"That's no excuse young ma- Tucker what in god's name is that?"  _ I've never seen Dad so close to cussing in front of me before. This is a true milestone. _

"Tucker Malik Foley is that the head of the robot ghost that shot at the targets in the backyard?" His mom didn't sound very thrilled, and Tucker could admit that he should've seen that coming but he needed the head anyways.

"I told you that the Fentons have great hologram technology and you saw that I have Sharon back, right? See, the hoverboard, some holograms and the kind of backdoor that opens up when you put someone else's things into your own stuff lead to us taking Skulker down. He's back on the other side where he belongs. And I thought 'hey, I could shut it down and eject him through my PDA, what can I figure out with my laptop' and I can see that you're not happy with the idea, which makes sense, but if I can figure out how Skulker's armor works then not only could I make something insanely effective at deterring ghosts from attacking us, but I'd also be able to make something that I can sell! And just imagine what kind of things we can get if I made money off of this." His parents had one of those silent conversations people had with looks and Tucker scrambled for something to add, something that would stop them from taking this away from him when he was on the edge of a breakthrough. "I'm close to breaking down all the firewalls, I know I am. I made an entire cybersecurity system for Dad's job, I think I can manage to crack a firewall."

"And how," Dad asked, "are we to know that you're doing this safely? You might trigger some sort of self destruct in the thing if you do this." Mom gave Dad a look, and Tucker almost snorted. "What? Angela this is like we stepped into a sci-fi world and I have no clue what to expect, so why wouldn't an evil ghost have a self destruct inside the robot suit it was possessing?"

"Valid enough concern, Dad, but I already disabled that and I uh, I'll do it at Fentonworks. They have all kinds of stuff for volatile experiments there. If something is about to blow, I'll get behind a blast shield and be as safe as possible." Another long moment of silent deliberation and his Mom sighed.

"Alright, we'll allow it. But if you at all get hurt then all of the suit that I know you're trying to hide from us is going to the dump, you understand me mr.?" Tucker put the head on his bed, launched himself at his parents, and hugged them both tight. "This doesn't excuse you getting into a fight with a  _ ghost _ young man." They were both hugging back, so Tucker laughed it off. That was a discussion for later.

Before his parents could make it a discussion for then and there, Tucker grabbed the head, slid down his ladder, and got to his board as quickly as he could. Taking to the skies, Tucker zoomed straight for Danny's workshop building instead of going through the Fenton's house. Opening the door, he rode the board in and blinked a couple of times as he looked around, getting a better chance to take it all in. "So  _ this _ is where he does all of that art. It looks like Dr. Fenton put every painting or doodle Danny's ever done on the walls in here." There were very few empty spaces on the walls of the very first room, easels and framed paintings and even first-grade doodles that Tucker recognized were hung all around the room. Dismounting the board, Tucker headed down the stairs and plopped himself in Danny's wheely chair, spinning around a couple of times before setting down Skulker's head and opening a drawer. "Danny and I are gonna discuss him moving my stuff when I leave it here."

With Skulker’s helmet on the table and connected to his laptop, the room was full of the hum and buzz of electricity, the clacking of his fingers on the keys and Tucker lost track of time. Sure, he’d managed to shut it down and open up the thing to force Skulker out of the chest but those were the easiest things for him to access even with a backdoor. “There’s no way someone like Skulker could’ve made something with this much protection. I usually have something like this dealt within two days tops.” He hit enter once more, running his firewall crack and leaned back. “There’s gotta be something useful in all of this.”

Ding! Humming, whirring, buzzing, the head came to life with emerald flame and something  _ clicked. _ Tucker saw the programs pop up on his screen, the programs, the blueprints, and weapon schematics, and the code sang to him, how to do what Skulker did with just a bit of energized ectoplasm! Music filled his ears, his soul, his fingers. His human mouth could not sing the melodies, but metal could and metal would. 

"The world is just vibrating strings, you just gotta know how to play the universe's song." Tucker took special note of one piece in particular. “Intangibility modulater huh? Thank you Hunter Grovsner, you’re so pathetically weak of a ghost your suit has to compensate. Now then,” Tucker thinks, thinks of all the things he could do with something like that, thinks of how to best make it convenient, and he starts designing, letting the music of the universe guide him, “let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it is unclear, Danny is using sign language when the text is bolded but not quoted, as talking hurts. Questions? Comments? Thoughts about the world? Light to offer our space boy for a swift recovery?


	11. Frogs and Misunderstandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teen Rebels For The Environment, Local Genius Reveals Odd Sensations, Local Bully Pranked, Local Dead Kid Vents and Makes New Friend

Sam carved through the sky on a trail of brilliant neon blue light that came from the engine of her board, diving down every time she saw a piece of litter on the ground and putting it in the nearest trash or recycling bin she found. "I need to ask Tucker about installing some soft of litter spotting function for the AI in the helmets, this is ridiculous.” Once she reached her house, Sam alighted on her balcony and hummed. _Pulling it into the house on foot to show grandma would probably be safer. On the other hand, I've skateboarded through this place more times than I can count._ Sam flew into her room, out the bedroom door, and down the hallway in search of her grandmother. Encountering a couple of people in the halls had Sam testing the strength of the magnetic boots by swerving to ride along the ceiling. "Woo!" Sam swerved once more as she felt the blood rushing to her head and slowed to a stop over the main staircase.

A search through her grandmother's study, the dining room, and several other fun parts of the mansion, Sam concluded that Ida had to be in the bowling alley. Halfway there, she was met with the only real obstacle between her and most of the more exciting fun in her life. "Samantha, _what are you doing?_ " Her mother and father stared at her in shock, anger, and bafflement as Sam came to a dead stop in front of them. Dismounting the board, Sam grinned.

"I'm about to show grandma Ida something amazing, as soon as you move so I can get into the bowling alley."

"Where did you get this dangerous piece of technology?" Her father couldn't stop staring at the board long enough to glare at her, which her mother had covered as usual. "This is from that Fenton boy isn't it?" Sam rolled her eyes and pulled off her helmet.

"Yes, Danny and Tucker both made hoverboards and are helping me-"

"Endanger yourself with reckless stunts! Oh, you were bad enough with your skateboard inside but now you're riding this _thing_ around my house?"

"Last I checked, Mother, it's Grandma Ida's house, not yours." Sam held up her helmet. "Also I'm perfectly safe. I have new magnetic boots to keep me on the board no matter how harsh the winds blow and a helmet in case the board goes out of control. I'm the one who taught Danny and Tucker how to surf in the first place."

"And look where interacting with them has gotten you! First, it's ghosts and monsters that attack you at the school and now this? What if you fall while trying to do a trick on a rooftop? What protection is this helmet then?"

Sam tugged at her jacket, shaking her head. "Dad, please, anytime I go high I'm wearing layers to cushion the impact. I was maybe 10 feet above ground level the whole time here." _What they don't know won't hurt them._ No interaction with Sam's parents would be complete without a screech of outrage from her mother, however, how could Sam forget?

"WHAT IS THAT?" Mother pulled her jacket back enough to reveal the new scar she'd received from being hit by one of Skulker's crossbow bolts. _I've been doing so good about covering that up too - only use makeup has._

"I'm not sure if you've ever roughhoused with friends in your entire life, mother, but I tripped over at Tucker's house and scraped my shoulder on one of the trees in his backyard. It's nothing serious and should probably fade soon enough." Grabbing onto her board, Sam shouldered past her parents and walked toward the bowling alley door. "Honestly, you need to stop overreacting like that. You might lose your voice." _Gods forbid I get any peace like that around here._

"That is it! I have had it! Bad enough that the Fenton boy and his insane parents have been influencing you to keep up with this ridiculous phase of yours-"

"All things in life are a phase, Dad, name one permanent thing besides death and entropy."

"But now their inventions and nonsense are putting you in danger! Baby girl, I'm thinking I should get a restraining order."

Sam felt her grip grow tight around the knob of the door and she scowled at her parents. "Never call me baby girl, and how much wine have you been drinking lately? You can't just put a restraining order on my best friend, Dad, I voluntarily hang out with him because he's fun to be around."

"How dare you speak to your father like that?" The look on her mother's face likely could wither all of Sam's precious plants at once. Sam remembered a time when that look would shut her down for days at a time and she'd simply say nothing to either of her parents. Wrenching the door open Sam rolled her eyes. _Exposure therapy without the therapy I guess._ "Young lady you will apologize this instant!"

"Oh, but Mother, you wouldn't want me to be insincere, would you? I didn't come to argue with you over something as ridiculous as a restraining order that would never work, I came to show Grandma Ida proof that we have the technology ready for my idea. Unlike you two, I'm trying to steer this company in a direction that'll contribute to helping the planet. Because, ya know, I care."

"What you should be caring about is respecting your elders!"

"As the elder here, Jeremy, I'd feel respected if you all would stop shoutin right at the door. It's barely even noon." Grandma Ida shook her head as she scootered over. Sam let go of the board and let it hover, gesturing grandly at it and her grandma stared for a long moment.

"Don't you see, mother? Samantha's friendship with that Fenton boy is opening her up to ridiculous amounts of danger and she refuses to respect even our concerns about the issue, much less show enough respect not to insult us to our faces!" Dad's scowl turned quickly to wide-eyed bemusement when Grandma Ida laughed hard enough to start wheezing. "Mother?"

"Babula you managed to bring me a little miracle just to say you can pull off a bigger one! Every day you remind me more and more of myself." She pulled Sam into a hug. "I will say that you shouldn't go insulting your parents - there's a difference between rewarding respect with respect and refusing to give it - but just going outside is dangerous for a child and you both know that. This hoverboard is no different from any other sport that Sam does, and it's a marvelous thing that she has friends willing to share such amazing gifts with her."

"Ida, why do you always side with her whenever she argues with us?"

"Because I agree with her, Pamela, why else? From all your shouting I heard something about a restraining order." Grandma scoffed and Sam grinned. "That's preposterous. The Fentons have done nothing wrong to us."

"They are a disturbance to the public peace-"

"They are wonderous inventors who provide the town with limitless, cheap power, mother. The Fentons do good for the town - what if we somehow had a blackout? With the whole town connected to the Fentons are you gonna sue them for coming out to fix whatever the problem is?" Sam crossed her arms and glared at her parents with as much anger as she could muster. The entire argument was getting tiresome more than anything.

Mother looked moments away from exploding before Dad took a deep breath, let it out, and put a comforting hand on Mother's shoulders. "Fine. No charges or restraining orders against the Fentons. But the next time I hear they've put you in danger, young lady, all bets are off." Her parents left before their blood pressure could be raised any higher, and Sam turned to her grandma, giving her another hug.

"Thank you, grandma. It's good to know you have my back."

"Of course, Sammy. Now, while this is amazing I'm not sure it'll convince the board without an actual blueprint for the car you want us to make." She smiled. "It does look fun though."

"It _is_ fun but as much as I hate agreeing with Mom and Dad it's also pretty dangerous if you can't keep your balance." An old lady pouting was always the good kind of cute, even someone as cute adverse as Sam could admit that. "My friends helped out even more than I had planned, and we have the protoype for that car ready for a test drive if you wanna see it?”

“What are we doin still here then?”

* * *

“I dearly hope you understand, Mr. Fenton, that you cannot use your odd firearms on school property unless you have legitimately no other choice.” Danny feels his face burning as Principal Ishiyama gives him the rundown on the rules of the school, always rounding back to that. As if she hadn’t made it clear five times already. “It may not technically be illegal for you to own the weapons themselves and I understand that you might inevitably need them, but I better not see them out unless it’s an emergency. Am I clear?”

“Yes ma’am, you’re perfectly clear.” Danny did his absolute best not to grit his teeth when he spoke to the principal, aware that he was on thin ice. Still, he couldn’t be more relieved when he was told to gather his things and head to his new locker. Walking out into the hall to find Sam and Tucker there, Danny leaned on Sam and groaned loudly. “I’m tempted to ask for homeschooling.” His friends stare at him flatly for all of five seconds before he cracks and leans instead on Tucker. “Yeah, no, definitely not. You’re right.”

“Of course we’re right. Now, which locker are we taking you too so you can stop leaning and start walking?” Tucker ruffled Danny’s hair even as the boy pulled his hood over his head and groaned. Eventually, Danny stood up and pulled out a slip of paper.

“Locker 274, apparently.” Danny started checking numbers when he heard the most melodramatic of sounds. “Did you just. Gasp in unison? Did you practice that?” Turning around Danny saw that Sam and Tucker wore matching expressions of abject horror that went beyond what even a fight with a killer robot poacher could evoke. “Did my life just become a horror movie?”

“You don’t know the legend of locker 274?” Danny couldn’t tell if the horror in Tucker’s whisper was at the legend or Danny’s ignorance of it.

“Is there a vampire waiting to spring out and suck out my blood if I open this locker door?”

Sam snorted and shook her head, unease unravelling before his eyes from a tangled ball of prickly violet shards to verdant vines and leaves. "No, you dork. The locker is supposedly haunted - probably why she gave it to you." Danny groaned, long and loud, banging his head on the locker.

"Sidney Poindexter used to have this locker back in the fifties, you see, and people were even bigger assholes to each other then than they are now," Tucker said, voice pitched toward an old scary movie narrator. "When you're nerdy, your look isn't right and someone finds out you're not straight in the fifties, shit gets real bad real fast. Everyone bullied him all the time, and he got stuffed in this locker so many times that they say when he died here at Casper, his spirit lingered in the locker itself."

Danny stared at Tucker for a long moment, turning all of that over in his head. Then he pulled his backpack off his back and thwapped Tuck on the head with it. Sam snorted, laughing next to him and he got her too. "Watch it ghost boy!"

"That didn't hurt. Also, did you guys seriously just gay up not tell me about the haunted locker this whole time? Were you ever going to?" Danny opened the locker with a sigh, focusing on the second plane. The mirror at the back of the locker shimmered dimly with ghostly light but Danny could hardly see it. “There’s something there but it’s dim-” hands were on his body and Danny was shoved into the locker entirely, limbs folding to compact himself with as little damage as possible. Pushing himself out, Danny whirled around with a snarl.

“-cking hell, goth bitch, I was just helpin Fentonio check out his new locker.” Dash had one hand on his shin and the other was covering his crotch protectively - as though that could keep him safe from Sam’s steel boots. “It’s Poindexter’s locker, right? Perfect place for a geek like him.”

“Wow Dash, I’m impressed! A word with three whole syllables in it! Maybe you’ll be able to use your expanded vocabulary to get a good grade on an english test without cheating off of Mikey.” Dash scowled at Danny, his aura sparking and popping like fireworks and red as his jacket. “Or maybe football has damaged your skull beyond repair and you’ll never be able to get anywhere without swinging your fists around. Only time will tell, huh?”

Before Dash could follow up Sam’s manslaughter with his own attempt at Murdering Danny™ - the fun new game for people ages 14-105 - the bell rang and the trio slipped away in the ensuing crowd of students flooding the halls to get to class. Sam ruffled Danny’s hair, which he then covered up with his hood, and the three of them laughed as they tumbled into class together and sat down. “That was amazing, Danny! Dash is gonna try to actually murder you next time he sees you, but I’m proud of you for getting out of it so quickly.”

“The kinda bullshit he pulls, he deserves a lot more than just being talked around in circles,” Tucker grumbled. “Like… if you got him back while you’re invisible, no one could _know_ it was you getting back at him, right?”

“True…”

“Actually, Danny, your parents would find out it’s you. Pretty damn quickly.” Sam nudged him with an elbow. “Or at least that a ghost did it. One tore through the school and now the principal is paranoid - ghostly revenge on Dash would just tell her to have the security system turned on.”

“Ugh, that’d be a pain.” Danny agreed with a slump, pouting at the board. “Still, just one prank might not hurt.”

“Or it’ll hurt a hell of a lot, Danny.”

“The system won’t notice Danny at all and he can wait till it’s turned off to do something again. Ow, ow, Sam my head is very precious and that textbook counts as a lethal weapon.”

“Please stop making horrible suggestions to our best friend then.” Sam flashed Tucker a smile with far too many teeth for comfort and he grumbled with his arms crossed. Sam’s grin slid from threatening to smug and Danny rolled his eyes.

The day was at first hope inducingly normal. Classes were unengaging, unchallenging, or just boring. Sam, while proud of the results of the test drives of the car project, was now championing a protest against having to dissect frogs in school. By lunch, Danny had to finally say something between all the nodding along. “Sam, as much as I agree that I don’t want to cut open frog corpses, I also don’t want to think about fro-any corpses while I’m eating lunch.”

“Fair enough,” Sam conceeded. “You guys have anything to add?”

Tucker jerked his chin in the direction of the table the jocks and cheerleaders were sitting at, rather close to them. Danny raised a brow and listened in. “And all of a sudden, this locker door flies open and nails me.” That had all three of them turning their attention to him. Paulina, dubbed by some as the prettiest girl in school, was brushing white foam out of her hair and Danny winced.

“I’m gonna be brushing this stuff out of my hair for a week!”

“It’s like the school is haunted.”

Sam arched a brow at Danny, leaning closer to him. “Sounds like _somebody_ ’s been busy.”

“It wasn’t me, I swear!” Danny grinned, barely holding in a laugh at the idea. “That’s fire extinguisher foam in her hair, I know how hard it is to get that out. I’m not gonna do that to anyone.”

“Ok but how’d that even happen?” Tucker chewed his chicken for a few moments before pointing his fork at Danny. “Maybe Sidney Poindexter’s ghost has something to do with this? You said you could sense something in the mirror right? It was pretty faint but I’m absolutely certain I heard like, buzzing or something coming off of it.”

“I- wait, buzzing? Like you could hear the energy?” Danny put down his food and stared at Tucker’s ears, trying to see if any ghostly light shone from them. Tucker nodded and Danny frowned. “That’s not normal.”

“Nothing about us is normal, Danny,” Sam said with a roll of her eyes. “I was shopping for books the other day and felt some weird vibrations coming off of it and when I picked it up I got the strangest feeling in the world.”

“I first started hearing it when I cracked Skulker’s stupid firewalls down, and now whenever I touch a piece of technology I can practically hear it singing to me.” Tucker shrugged, poking his chicken. “Maybe it’s like, something to do with the radiation that came from the portal opening? I mean, look what it did to you.”

“Yeah but I was _in_ the portal when it turned on.”

“And we were right in front of it with no hazmat suits. Plus we’ve been around ghostly stuff a lot, so maybe we’re just getting super powers like you, but slower?” Sam nudged Danny’s arm and smiled. “I mean, the book I found was on magick, imagine if a charge of ecto energy is all it takes to make that work.”

“Hey, maybe that’s what’s happening with Sidney Poindexter in the mirror? Exposure to Danny’s power may have made it easier for Poindexter’s own power to leak out into our world.”

Before Danny could say anything to that, a football collided with the side of his head and he found himself leaning on Sam for stability. Reaching down, Danny grabbed the ball, looked around the cafeteria as though wondering who might’ve thrown it, and crushed it in his hand. In his peripheral vision, Danny caught Dash groaning over his foot and standing up to leave. Sam brought his attention back to her. “You ok Danny?”

“I’m peachy. I’m apparently radiating my best friends into ghostly mutants and the meathead quarterback just beaned me with his football and looks like he’s about to go grab another one.”

Tucker glared at Dash’s back and muttered, “I wonder how Dash would feel with one of those frog cadavers down his throat?” Danny felt his frown curl upside down in a smirk.

“Or 12, in his pants. I’ll be right back.” Before Sam could say something about morals and being the better person, Danny stood up and hurried off to the bathroom. Making sure no one was there to see him, he reached inside and let the icy chill of the void fill his body up in a flash of light, and slid immediately into the unreal space between spaces. In moments, Danny was in Falluka’s biolab, and grinned at the empty room. A box full of dead frogs invsible in his hand, Danny found Dash opening his locker, and yanked up his boxers, then the back of his jeans before dumping the frogs in his pants. Dash ran off screaming and Danny laughed so hard he started floating backwards.

“You think that’s funny, buster?” Danny flinched, opening his eyes to stare at the person in front of him. A ghost in the shape of a glowing white human, his edges rippling slightly despite the lack of a breeze. His eyes are solid white, but glimmer like polished opals, his mouth twisted up in a frown and his clothes clearly dated. Danny gawked at the transparent teen in front of him and checked mentally to be sure that he was still just as heated up as he should be when invisible.

“You can see me?”

“Yeah that’s right, bub! Now leave that poor kid alone.” The boy pointed a thumb in the direction Dash had run, and Danny felt his blood boil.

“Poor kid? **Poor kid?** ” Danny slipped back into visibility, his voice reverberating with his anger. “ **That poor kid is the star quarter back of the Casper High Ravens! That poor kid is the guy who stuffs me and every other scrawny kid in his path into our lockers because he thinks it’s funny we can be forced to fit in them! That oh so poor kid’s wealthy, popular, and has put more kids through swirlies, purple nurples and indian burns than years he’s been alive!** Oh no, he might have a hard life at home **that’s not an EXCUSE and I don’t CARE! He’s been doing this shit for as long as I’ve known him!** ” Danny shoved a finger into the other boy’s chest, barely noticing the lights flickering and threatening to shatter. “If stuffing a few frogs down a guy’s pants in retaliation for being half drowned in toilet water is bad th **en call me the fucking Joker.** ”

The boy floated there, staring at Danny with wide eyes for the longest time and Danny took that moment to breathe and collect himself. By the time his aura wasn’t crackling at the edges like solar flares, Danny was being offered a transparent hand. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. Name’s Sidney Poindexter.”

“I’m Danny, Danny Phantom. Hey, we should probably leave before the security system comes on - do you remember where the park is?” If this was the Sidney Poindexter Tucker had told him about then he might not’ve been around when the Park was first there. Danny had no idea how old anything in their town was but he was beginning to feel he should learn.

Sidney smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I do. Care to show me around?”

“I actually can’t leave the building yet, but I’ll meet you there, I promise.” Danny patted Sidney on the shoulder, considered what he knew about Sidney, and pulled him into a hug instead. The other ghost went stiff for a moment but relaxed and hugged him back not too long after. Danny patted his back and watched him fly through the ceiling before heading back to the bathroom, unseen and untouchable, and from there back to his friends. “Guys, you’ll never believe what just happened.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always hated the way Butch pretended Danny getting petty revenge was as horrible as what Dash does to him and all the other scrawny kids. It's total bs. I also feel like Sidney easily could've been a good pal of Danny's if Danno had taken half a moment to explain to Sidney what was going on. So uh. Tada!


	12. Encounters with the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nerds chat, big sisters are consulted, ghosts are fought, magick is performed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW DECADE MY DUDES! IT IS WODENSDAY AND I BRING YOU GHOSTS

“You know, Danny, one day you have to do something that isn’t mind-blowingly awesome,” Tucker said. “One of these days it’ll happen. You’ll say something plain and boring, not ‘I’ve been to the moon’ or ‘I found the ghost that was haunting my locker and made fast friends with him’.” Tucker didn’t really mean that of course, he wasn’t sure Danny was capable of doing something that wasn’t impressive. Then again that might’ve just been because Tucker thought everything Danny did was impressive. They were flying over Amity Park on hoverboards controlled by their gloves, all because of Danny.

“Tucker, please,” Danny scoffed, “It’s not that what I say will be something dull and normal, it’ll just be what our new normal is pretty soon.” Danny had his hood up, somehow, and didn’t both wearing his helmet. Unlike Tucker, he didn’t actually need it to keep safe in the air. He wove around Tucker in circles before diving for the park, a cheer on his lips. Tuck dove after him, and soon enough a monochrome figure came into view, blurry at the edges but his face matched his yearbook photo easily enough. The two skidded to a stop and hopped off their boards - which took more effort than was convenient, he’d have to figure out a way to fix that - and Danny held up a hand for a high five. Sidney flinched back a bit and Tuck cleared his throat.

“Danny, high fives were invented around the ’70s. Sidney is from the 50s.” Tucker slapped Danny’s hand to demonstrate and grinned. “It’s just a greeting, like a handshake but faster. Hi, I’m Tucker Foley.” He held out his hand and Sidney stared at him. “I’m the furthest thing from a bully.”

“Tucker is the geekiest guy in the world.” Tucker stepped on Danny’s foot for that, grinning at the yelp he received. “That’s a _compliment_ you dork!”

“Sidney Poindexter,” he finally shook Tucker’s hand, and smiled.

“So, Sidney, how’s it been, finally being back on Earth?” Leave it to Danny to ask the awkward question.

Sidney just lit up like a christmas tree though and spread his arms out to gesture at the park. “It’s been amazing! Everyone looks so different and all the cars are so much faster and sleeker than before - colorful too! I’ve never seen so many different kinds of people just hanging out with each other! Though there’s a lot I don’t understand, and I guess that’s just how the future is supposed to feel but goly these rectangles people are tapping on seem to do a _lot_.”

“Yeah, different time periods make for pretty different experiences,” Danny mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Speaking of experiences, what’s it like on the other side?” On one hand Tucker wanted to smack Danny with his hat for that, but on the other he understood wanting to know. They weren’t exactly about to go through the portal to find out and get lost.

“Oh. Well uh, for a while I was just floating around in the green void, passing through doors and islands and buildings and even other ghosts. According to some Will O Wisps I wasn’t really a ghost yet, just a soul that got stuck in the Infinite Realms.” Danny had pulled out his journal, looking at Sidney intently and Tucker knew the look on his face. Danny was hyperfocused by now. “That’s what it’s called, by the way, the Infinite Realms. Cause it goes on forever n ever and apparently anybody from everywhere can end up there. It felt like I was in there for years before enough of the uh…”

“Ectoplasm?” Danny held up a hand and with visible concentration silvery green light jumped between his fingers and wrapped around them like a blanket.

Sidney snapped his fingers. “Yeah, ectoplasm! Enough of it bonded to me that I could touch things around me again, which was swell! It was pretty scary too, though, cause _anything_ can become a ghost…”

“Huh… like dragons, and jersey devils and chupacabras?” Tucker snorted at Danny, rolling his eyes.

“What, have you met bigfoot?”

“No, but I _did_ meet the Fiskerton Phantom, and a komodo dragon that can turn invisible.”

“Like I said, scary stuff. But uh, ghosts can make these things, places, called Sanctuaries where they can be safe, which is what most of the islands and stuff in the Realms are. And I managed to make one, and I was safe from most of the more dangerous ghosts out there! But… that safety didn’t really last.”

“Did you go through a portal and end up trapped in your mirror somehow?” Sidney flickered like static and laughed, a hollow sound that made Tucker shiver and his skin crawl.

“Oh wouldn’t that’ve been better? No, I messed up. I hadn’t listened to the ghost with the blue dress and blonde hair that told me how making a sanctuary works - or I guess I didn’t ask enough questions about it.” Sidney’s eyes flickered red and Tucker felt a tug in his hand, looking down to see his helmet was glowing green. “It was based on my **memories** . The most recent ones too, so I ended up in my own **Casper High** with a bunch of… I dunno, echoes or shadows of **the bullies from my life** and by the time I realized what had gone **wrong I couldn’t get out**.” Sidney wrapped his arms around himself and Tucker was absolutely about to lose hold of his helmet.

“Sidney, would you like a hug? Cause you sound like you need a hug.” Danny spread his arms wide open for Sidney, and over the din of insults and jeers and _horrible laughter_ that Tucker could hear from Poindexter, he could hear the ebb and crash of waves on a beach coming from Danny. Sidney blinked, looking up at Danny with wide eyes and for a few moments he didn’t do anything. Then he nodded and was being pulled into the inescapable warmth of Danny’s hug. 

“Dang, that sounds like a job for Jazz. She can use her super psychology powers to help you out.” Tucker set down his helmet, which was no longer about to fly away, and pulled the Fenton Finder™ out of his jacket - which Tucker had figured out how to add a porta pocket to while he was building the tangibility modulator. When he looked up, Sidney was far more solid looking and Danny was staring at him like he’d handed him the moon and said it was his. “What?”

“Tucker Foley, you absolute _genius!_ ” Danny’s arm swung out and Tucker was dragged into the hug.

“Okay, I absolutely am a genius, but what did I say?”

“Sidney, I have an older sister named Jazz - who you cannot tell about my ghost half by the way, that’s a big secret - and like, a hug is good for a lot of things but having someone to talk to is way better!”

Sidney squirmed in the embrace and phased out of it, leaving Tucker to his fate of being pressed against his best friend like a teddy bear. “I uh. I dunno about that. Last time I had someone to talk to it was the guid **ance counselor** and that uh. Well let’s just say my death was more than just **bullies** being too rough.”

Oh, Tucker did not like that at all. “I promise you, Jazz is 500 times better than that. She’d never hurt anyone that needs her help like that.”

Sidney still looked sceptical but Danny let go of Tucker and lowered his voice to something soft and sure. “Sidney, Jazz is my big sister. She’s literally always trying to make sure I’m feeling as good as is humanly possible in the face of all the weirdness our parents have put us through. When I was 7 and she was 9 the christmas turkey came to life and she fought it off because I was too small to fight at all and then she taught me what she knew about martial arts. There’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t trust Jazz with, and you should trust her too. But, I can’t make you trust her and I still have to ask her if she’ll do it.”

Sidney took a breath, fully opaque for once, and gave Danny a shaky thumbs up. “Sure.”

“Awesome as that is,” Tucker said, raising the Fenton Finder. “I need to scan you so we can make sure that the security system doesn’t shoot you if something bad happens in the school.”

* * *

If there was any one chore that Jazz would happily dump on her little brother were he there for her to give it to him, it was moving boxes of scrapped experiments to the shed. Danny very clearly needed the exercise and Jazz didn’t, and it was tedious. She was a good older sister, she deserved a bit of pettiness. Besides, it meant that she could only give Spike half of her attention as he complained about his little brother cryptid hunting. “Tell Wes that even if he’s right, he shouldn’t endanger the cryptids by trying to show them off to humanity. If you appeal to his empathy he’ll probably either actually stop, or at least stop coming to you about it so that you don’t try and guilt him for what he’s doing.”

“Wouldn’t expect that kind of manipulation from you, Jazz. Is that what you do to get your brat to be quiet for five seconds?”

“First of all, I’m studying psychology Spike. I know how people work.” She set down a box of broken tools and failed devices that would only see the light of day as melted down and repurposed scrap in some other experiment. “Secondly, how dare you insinuate I don’t find Danny’s info dumps about space interesting. It’s adorable and he’s very informative.”

“Uh, rude? I’m not cute, in the slightest.” Jazz turned to see Danny pouting in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m a total badass.”

“Badasses can carry all this scrap from the lab to the shed, shorty.”

“Heck, aren’t you clever? Like, the best at thinking up any response to anything. You know, I uh. I have something you might not have the perfect answer for.” Danny’s hands were stuffed in his pockets now and his shoulders were hunched. This was important.

“Spike, I’ll talk to you later. Remember, morality!” Jazz hung up and ruffled Danny’s hair, grinning at the pout he gave her. “So?”

“So,” he said back, rocking on his heels. “You don’t like, agree with Mom and Dad about ghosts, right?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to disagree they exist when I shot one off of you, little brother. I’d be pretty bad at the scientific method if I ignored proof right in front of my eyes.”

Danny huffed a laugh and shook his head. “No no, I mean like… what they think of ghosts. You don’t think they’re all ‘evil’ for being ghosts, right?”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “Danny there’s no such thing as evil. I may have been… less than correct about ghosts _existing_ but I do know that Mom and Dad know nothing about psychology.” She watched some of the tension in Danny’s posture die down and poked his stomach. “Why?”

“Right,” he said and took a breath. “So, if I were to show you, hypothetically, someone in need of therapy who may or may not be a bit deceased-”

“Can someone only be a bit deceased but otherwise ok?”

“You’d be surprised,” he huffed. “Enough that it’s obvious anyway? Would you, hypothetically, be able to help?”

Jazz rolled that over in her head a bit. Danny had found a ghost that disproved their parents’ hypothesis - or prejudiced stereotype, a toss-up if any - and felt they needed psychiatric help but didn’t trust any Amity doctor not to call the Fentons or try to charge the dead a fee. That or he was fucking with her, but Danny was bad at hiding his distress and the longer she stayed silent the more he fidgeted.

“So whose ghost are you asking me to help out? I’m not Mom and Dad but I do have every right to worry about a stranger you’re inviting into your life.” Danny sighed and relaxed more than he had in a while around her. Jazz couldn’t help but smile, even as she was crushed in a hug. “Lungs.”

“You’ll be _fine_ and his name is Sidney Poindexter.” Danny squeezed her one more time before letting go. “According to Tucker, he’s the guy who used to have my current locker.”

“You have a haunted locker at school… why am I not surprised?” Jazz shook her head, covering her face with her hand. “Sidney Poindexter, that kid who reportedly suffered the most bullying in the history of the school and … ok, wow, he really would need therapy if he were to hypothetically come back to the land of the living. I wonder where I might find him?” Danny didn’t need to hear any of the less pleasant details of that story unless Sidney chose to tell him.

“No clue. When I finish coming up with that hypothetical part of the situation I’ll tell you.” Danny fired her a pair of finger guns and backed away slowly, somehow not tripping over his own feet like the last time she saw him do that. “Later Spazz.”

“Remember not to smear your weird UV paint all over your jacket, Picasso.”

“THOSE WERE NOT SMEARS, IT WAS _ART_ ,” he said, and Jazz held onto the door while she laughed.

* * *

“I’m worried about Danny.” Jazz had to wait until lunch and sped through eating just to find him, but she’d tracked down Vice-Principal Lancer and he agreed to walk and talk. “He’s been through a lot lately, what with tests and bring hunted by a robot like an animal and social pressures and I _know_ it’s getting to him.”

Lancer arched a brow and sighed at her as they turned a corner. “Have you tried talking, Jazz? It’s the staple of human survival, communication, and all kinds of relationships.”

“I’d talk with him if I could, Mr.Lancer, but I’m his older sister and I’m afraid Danny’s reaching a point in his life where you keep things from your family while you try and figure it out on your own to be more independent.” If Jazz noticed Lancer giving her a pointed look, he hadn’t verbally acknowledged her glasshouse so she could throw as many stones as she so pleased. They stopped and Lancer fished out a ring of keys. “He wouldn’t talk to me about this, probably wouldn’t even listen when I try and tell him to open up to someone. Also, why are we heading into the guidance counselor’s office? Have you gotten a license in that as well?” It was a joke among the upperclassmen that Lancer was at least vaguely equipped to substitute teach literally every class in their underfunded school.

Lance snorted and flipped through keys. “No, Jazz, we’ve actually finally managed to grab a guidance counselor. You know I can’t do _everything_ around here.”

“You most certainly seem to.”

“Be that as it may, Jazz, he may listen to me and I’ll try talking to him but have you considered this all is- Great Gatsby!” Jazz turned away from Lancer to see what startled him and felt every muscle in her body lock up in shock. The room was a mess, burn marks reminiscent of Dad’s latest weapon going off randomly at home littered the walls, the desk was flipped upside down and acrid smoke met her nostrils nearly choking her. Or maybe she had simply stopped breathing when her eyes landed on the figure in the center of the room, green light radiating from their form in all directions casting eerie shadows everywhere and wide green lights bright as torches shone from underneath a cloud of white and above a mass of black and white material. They pulled a black hood up over their curly white hair and a masculine voice hissed out a quiet, forceful and slightly reverberating, “ **_Shit._ **”

Holding up his hands, the figure’s eyes dimmed slightly and Jazz could make out bright blue skin tinged with a bit of green. “Now I know what this looks like, but I promise there’s a perfectly logical explanation.”

“You’re a ghost.” Jazz wasn’t asking a question, her voice pitched up in a desire to be horribly wrong more than curiosity.

“Lab Safety is important.” The green light flickered, a blue face made indistinct by the light show and the shadows of the hood visibly cringed and Lancer gasped in horror in front of her. “I know that maks this illogical by default.”

“That depends,” Jazz said slowly while reaching into her pocket and fishing for a small tube of what would look like lipstick to anyone else, “on why you trashed the room. This does look pretty-”

“Jasmine what are you doing!?” Lancer hissed, and while Jazz was certain he meant the talking in general, the light in the boy’s eyes shifted toward her hand. He sucked in a superfluous breath and vanished from sight while Jazz let off a litany of swears in her head.

“I was trying to get some information from him, Mr. Lancer. He had an explanation apparently and I wanted to hear it.” Jazz dropped the lipstick tube back into her pocket and crossed her arms. “Didn’t you just tell me that communication is important?”

“Important as it is, Jasmine,” Lancer said with what Jazz recognized as a lecturing tone and decided that she already didn’t like what he had to say. “That was a _ghost_ and I do believe the experts - your parents - have advised us all to avoid grabbing the attention of a ghost unless we want to become one.” Of all the times for anyone to actually acknowledge her parents’ work and knowledge and it was _now_?

“With all due respect, Vice Principal Lancer, I think that of all things to listen to my parents about for once, their biased prejudice against all things ghost is hardly the one to believe. If everyone that died was malicious then the second they got a way into the living world we’d be overrun and there wouldn’t _be_ a living world anymore.” Gesturing to herself and a staring Lancer she drawled, “I’d say we’re proof that my parents are wrong.”

While Lancer tried visibly to come up with an intelligent response to that, Jazz flicked on the lights and gave the room a closer look than she had before. Walking around she noticed the tiniest drops of ectoplasm lingering near where the burn marks were, and just under the desk. Pulling out a vial or three and some cotton swabs, Jazz put away a few samples to check over later. Even if she didn’t want to so much as acknowledge that her parents were right about ghosts existing, or fight them, she wasn’t going to bury her head in the sand and ignore all the evidence that said she needed to either get someone else to do something or do it herself. _What’s one more thing to steal my sleep away?_

She turned to a puzzled Lancer and cleared her throat. “It looks to me like a fight was happening here. A teenaged boy venting his anger over being d-” _Breathe and don’t think about it._ “In his particular situation would go somewhere he probably won’t get caught, not a school with a security system made specifically to shoot until he’s a bubbling pile of green sludge upon activation. I wish I knew what he was fighting and why but unfortunately he saw me reaching for a weapon and bolted.”

“Reaching for a weapon, Jazz?” Heaving a sigh she met the arched brow on Lancer’s face with a very practiced look she gave teachers that tried to paint her as being wrong about something.

“Principal Ishiyama said that we can use them in emergency situations and while I hardly share my parents’ opinion that all ghosts are malevolent mindless creatures, a teenager made of thoughts and emotions that just finished fighting isn’t someone I want to talk to without an option to defend myself. I’m safe around other human beings because I practice several martial arts, not because everyone is harmless.”

“That’s rather… pragmatic of you, Jazz.” Lancer let out a breath and the tension left his shoulders. He clasped a hand on her shoulder and Jazz was lead out of the destroyed room. “I personally feel that you need to speak with someone about all of this as much as Daniel does. After all, it _is_ happening to you too.”

“I appreciate your worry, Mr. Lancer, but it’s not necessary.” Jazz smiled at the man. “As much as I’m sure this guidance counselor will be great for the other students, I have someone I can talk to already.”

“That’s good, Jazz. Still, if you need any help I’m certain that Ms. Spectra will be happy to give it to you.”

* * *

"She saw me. She _saw me_ in a busted up room with my hands glowing, and I shit you not, she reached for a weapon." Danny paced in Tucker's room with his hood down and hands wildly gesticulating. “Now she and Mr. Lancer probably think I’m some destructive monster. There’s no way I could’ve made a worse impression.”

“Well,” Sidney said from his spot reclined in the air and watching Tucker play God of War, “when I first met you I thought you were bullying someone.”

“Plus,” Tucker chirped as he attempted, fruitlessly, to fight a Valkyrie, “you could’ve accidentally shot them. Much worse impression.” Kratos died on screen and Tucker growled to himself, lifting his controller to toss it and dropping it with a grimace instead. “That thing really fucked up my arm, huh?”

Danny sucked in a breath and held up a hand, pulling out bands of silver and green light from his center, gathering it above his palm as best as he could. It flickered and slipped out of his grasp every few seconds, like trying to hold water in a barely cupped hand. “I could try healing you?”

“Danny,” Sam drawled while putting down her book, “are you sure you know how to do that? It looks like your ectoplasm is glitching through you instead of listening to you.” Danny observed his arm, focusing on the first plane of existence as hard as he could, and huffed a sigh in agreement that it did look like a patch of glitchy green and white around his hand. “Hold out your hand, and Tucker hold out your arm for me.” The boys obliged and Sam held out a hand of her own, eyes closed, and pinched the ectoplasm haphazardly flowing around Danny’s hand. Danny’s eyes widened as she pulled the silvery light out of him and into her own aura, a few words being muttered in Hebrew as it flowed through her body to the other hand, and into Tucker’s arm. When the light faded, Danny felt tired and hungry, while Tucker looked far more relaxed than he had in a while. “Viola.” 

Tucker looked from his arm to Sam and back several times, flexing and stretching the appendage. “Sam, I cannot emphasize this enough, _holy shit._ ” Sam grinned smugly at them while Danny, Tucker, and Sidney all stared at her in awe. “How did you do that?”

“I put forth some effort and actually looked into this ghost stuff from an angle that wasn’t the Fentons’ research. That lead to magick, which leads us to this.” Sam held up her book Magick: the Life Blood of the Earth. “I had a feeling that using Danny’s ectoplasm might warrant immediate effects, especially since he was focusing on trying to heal Tucker.”

“Right,” Danny drawled. “Next time ask me first? I feel hungry enough to eat a whole pig right now.”

“Mom ha-

“But with like, vegetables and stuff because I value my health.” Tucker stuck out his tongue and Danny laughed.

“Tucker, do you have a flashlight?” Everyone turned to look at Sidney and Tucker shrugged, pulling a miniature flashlight out of his pocket and handing it over. Sidney turned it on and pointed it at Danny’s face. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Care to share that idea with the class, Sidney?” Tucker picked up his controller and chuckled as he started up the fight anew. “Is Danny supposed to photosynthesize?”

“Basically, yes!” Danny blinked a few times and tilted his head. “Ghosts are all made of ectoplasm, which drains pretty much anything of energy around it like a plant taking in sunlight, but some ghosts use particular forms of energy to sustain themselves, and when you were trying to heal Tucker everything got all dark, so I thought you might run better on light than just on the heat in the room. Better for your body if your ghost half isn’t sucking all the life-sustaining heat from it, right?” Everyone stared at Sidney for a long beat, trying to process what he’d said. Danny held out his hand and pinched the beams of light coming toward him. After a moment of consideration, he imagined himself drinking the light and the flashlight immediately went dark as it flowed into his hand. “See?”

“Sidney, you’re a genius!” Danny pulled Sidney into a hug and beamed. Then he started pulling on the strands of light racing through the air that he was sure no one else could see, absorbing what he was certain were the higher frequency gamma and uv lights around him. In moments the room looked the way it had before he’d gained his new Sight and for a moment Danny felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin. When he looked around the room however, he couldn’t help the pang of sadness that came with the lack of all those beautiful colors that only he (and Sidney he supposed) had been able to see. “I think I’ll save doing that for when I’m desperate, but that’s awesome to know!”

“So not only are you ghosts, but you’re also plants.” Tucker snorted. “No wonder Sam likes you so much.” Sam bopped him on the head with her book as he picked up his controller and he made an offending noise, which everyone ignored.

“Speaking of ghosts, I think I’ve just figured out a way for you to kill two birds with one stone, Danny! If we go on patrol with the Fenton Finder™ to find the blob ghost that tried to kill us and catch it before it hurts anyone, we can capture an aggressive ghost and show the public - and your family - that ghosts aren’t all evil.”

Danny frowned, watching Tucker get his butt handed to him by Kara on screen for the 28th time, and considered that. The shapeshifter was definitely going to hurt someone if they didn’t do anything about it and Danny knew his folks would jump on any amount proof that ghosts were all evil, likely to claim that this second malevolent spirit was a clear pattern of spiritual behavior. They didn’t need more help sowing anti-ghost sentiments among whoever thought they weren’t entirely crazy, and he didn’t need more harassment from the asshats who thought they were and that he probably was by extension. Ugh. “Tuck, where are you on figuring out who the guy is?”

“Did you _seriously_ think I could find out who this sentient blob of green slime with fangs and glowing red eyes that apparently shapeshifts is supposed to be? With what, ghoulgle?” Sidney chuckled and Sam laughed, shaking her head. “I’m a genius, obviously, but I’m not a wizard, Danny.” Danny’s shoulders slumped and he sighed. “Unless..”

“Unless?” Sidney and Danny echoed. Tucker looked at Sam’s book and so did the other boys, the idea sparked in their minds.

“Danny and Sidney combined aren’t going to have enough power to help me see through space and time to find out who this shapeshifter was. If we really wanna know, we’ll have to catch them and ask them through the thermos.”

“Alright, that’s fair.” Tucker lost in the game once more and turned the HorrorStation off. “Y’know what, sure. Let’s go hunt a ghost. I’m up for a fight we can actually win. Sidney, you in?”

“I-uh I’ll leave the fighting to you guys. I’m gonna give this youtube thing a try and see what I can learn.” He smiled and waved them off, and the trio shrugged, heading down the trap door to Tucker’s room and waving his parents goodbye.

While Sam and Tucker took their hoverboards to the air, Danny found the nearest alleyway and made sure no one was there to see him. He took in the sight of the vivid indigo surrounding him and reached inside for the ectoplasmic green and pearlescent white inside of him, watching it unfurl over his body in a flash and carve away at the ties between him and the Earth. He lifted off the ground and shook himself, sure that he’d never get used to it, before flying up to where Tucker and Sam were waiting for him with the Fenton Finder™ already out and his ectosignature blocked from it. At his insistence, they decided to search together in a group since splitting up was for the idiots getting picked off in a horror movie. Danny let himself slip into the space between spaces, where the background light of the world was blue and violet refusing to blend properly into indigo but just as intense as the indigo had been, if not more.

After an hour of searching, Danny saw a green dot at the edge of his full-body vision and the radar picked up on an ectosignature. They all dove toward the music store where people were beginning to run while screaming their heads off, and Danny dove through the illusion people called a wall foot first, slamming into the shapeshifter mid snarl. “Whoa there, flubber!” Danny ducked a swipe of claws and smirked. “I know jello can dance if you play loud enough music in front of it, but I didn’t know you wanted to. Screaming isn’t music unless it’s a Metallica song, man.”

Tucker and Sam burst through the doors and Sam opened fire, striking the blob while charging it like the crazy person she was. It lunged at her, knocking over a shelf on its way, and Sam barely avoided a bladed arm cutting her head off, though her leg was nicked and she fell to the ground with a litany of swears that Danny couldn't understand. Tucker shot the arm as it retracted into the shapeshifter and Danny dove between the angry monster and his best friend just in time for a fist the size of both of them to knock them into another shelf full of CDs. “Damn, we just fixed my arm and now my back is fucked up, Tucker groaned as he and Danny stood. Danny saw red.

Light and heat and power gathered above Danny’s palm like a raging river into a whirlpool, while Sam shouted insults at the shapeshifter. “Did anyone order a snot rocket?” His blast connected, knocking Discount Venom back into the help desk. An arm whipped out and caught Danny by his leg, slamming him into the ground and dragging him toward the ghost, bumping his already pounding head against every surface it could on the way.

“Aren’t you just the cleverest little bloodthirsty mutant?” Well, they finally heard it’s high masculine voice and Danny already hated the sound of it. “I actually felt that, you little freak.”

“If you think I’m the freak here, then you haven’t looked in the mirror lately,” Danny spat. “I know it’s hard, but you have to acknowledge that some people have actual bodies.”

“Such a sharp wit to go with those sharp teeth, too! Oh, but don’t worry, ghost kid, being a ghost isn’t what makes you so violent, clearly.” Danny heard the whine of an ecto pistol and sucked in a gasp as he was chucked into the air at the same time that a blast was fired. **_PAIN_ **. “Just ask your little murderer! That’s twice she killed you now, isn’t it? You really should let the other kid get a shot if you can, would-be witch.” The blob’s voice grew distant and muffled as pain filled everything inside of Danny, and while he didn’t remember returning to human form, he knew that it was blood on his back, not ectoplasm. His vision went dark, indigo, then blues and purple, then everything was a beautiful and impossible Lilac, and he could see and hear the stars calling out to him. He reached out and accepted their pull away from the pain in his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to start the new year with something that evil, yes, i know, i'm evil. HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW DECADE!


	13. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get darker right before they get brighter in the end, something three plucky teens are about to learn. Sometimes you just want that darkness to have never had a reason to come for you in the first place. One has to be careful what they wish for, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIGHT so I know the name change so late in the game is a little weird, but upon deciding on a good stopping point for this part of the series, I thought hey, the name isn't appropriate anymore. So! Here ya go lads, lasses and landos! Enjoy!
> 
> Edit 4/23/2020: so i just remembered that I never put this lovely edited chapter in here on the archived story! I just copypasted this from my main document regarding all this, and I hope you enjoy it!

Recovery

Danny laid cold, pale, and motionless on the ground. He should be none of these things, in either form. Danny Fenton the human being was warm and jittery, always stimming with a pencil or his ever-present leg bounce. His skin was a rich tan dotted with freckles that Tucker had connected together into constellations when they were five. Danny Phantom the ghost was indiscernible from the color of the sky, no matter what time of day it was, and his freckles not only glowed green, they were the exact same shade as the florescent star stickers all over their bedroom ceilings. He was always moving, bobbing in the air like a boat on the water, playing with the strands of light only he could see, zipping around in a fight he was way in over his head in. Danny was a radiant point of action and the warmth of life, or of just how much light he'd dragged into himself to transform, no matter what form he was.

The person in his arms right then and there, unmoving and devoid of heat and pale as a sheet, wasn't Danny Fenton, not anymore.

Sam was flicking through her book if that wasn’t someone else flipping pages at them that’d come in through the front door. Tucker didn’t check to see, because his brother was dead in his arms and he could barely see him through the tears in his eyes. Could barely hear his own stuttering gasps for more air to sob with because his useless super hearing was ringing with the silence where Danny’s slow, steady heartbeat should’ve been. Sam grabbed Danny’s jacket and Tucker flinched, pulling Dany closer. “Didn’t- didn’t you do  _ enough?” _

Sam flinched like he’d hit her and something cold and sharp inside was glad. “Help me, help me fix it,” she said. Her voice hadn’t cracked in months and he hadn’t seen tear tracks on her face since the Portal Accident. “We have to hurry, we can fix this.” Hope and shame blossomed in his gut and he relaxed his grip on Danny. They stripped off his jacket, shirt, and binder, and Sam pulled out his rifle and handed it to Tucker. “I need the ectoplasm cartridge, we need to get it out without breaking it and I don’t- I don’t.”

Tucker pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and got to work, retrieving a capsule full of charged ectoplasm and handing it to Sam, who had taken one of Danny’s brushes out of his jacket. They didn’t say much to each other as Sam drew symbols in ectoplasm all over Danny’s face, neck and chest. He kept his hope that this wouldn’t leave any more spooky marks on Danny to himself. The Lichtenberg scar shouldn’t still be visible like it was, but even amidst the glowing green ooze, Tucker couldn’t focus on anything else.

He silently vowed to learn Hebrew because when the chanting started, he knew his pronunciations were rough - maybe that was just his throat from all that sobbing. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that after 10 minutes of chanting and hoping and praying, the room, the store, the whole world went dark. It unfurled from Danny like roots on a plant, countless arms branching apart, searching for light and soaking it up for themselves. There was no heat, no light, no sound, nothing. He was in an empty void sucking away everything around it and Tucker almost screamed just to hear a sound.

Pinpricks of light appeared after eternity and Tucker heard a gasp, rough and agonized and the most beautiful sound in the world. Tucker bawled with joy, pulling Danny close and listening to him breathe. There were footsteps, gasps, the Drs. Fenton crying out Danny’s name but all Tucker cared about was that Danny was alive again.

A cloud of gas swirling and spinning around a single point, drawn into itself by the magnitude of it's being, stretched across a distance inarticulable as no mortal beings had yet been born with the faculties to define it, and the stars themselves had no need to measure the distance between them for they were always as close to each other as they had been in the beginning. That brilliant, vast cloud danced within, atop, and around itself for ageless time until the steps to the dance were so intricate, so tight-knit that he simply spun and spun, all heat and pressure and weight collapsing inward and twirling with elegance and passion that built and built until the heavens were illuminated on all sides with blinding light and roaring song, joining the chorus of his siblings and listening to the echoes of his children - not quite born as he was, small as he was vast, but fractal reflections of himself, burning within as much as he did and he loved them all the same.

Danny opened his eyes to harsh artificial light that buzzed in his ears, drawing in breath greedily and letting it out in a harsh cry of such raw emotion the room went dark and his body shook. The world was too bright, too loud, his small fragile mortal form burned raw and sensitive to the lightest touch of the sheets on his skin. The room stank of sanitation and everything was dim, grey, muted. Where the vibrant indigos, blues, violets and cyans of the true, fuller world beyond used to tint his vision like stained glass lenses covered his eyes, now it was leeched of everything but the pale light that humans saw by and something deep inside of him trembled and ached. He sobbed with cries that shook the windows as much as his lungs and yet no matter how much he tried his cold mortal body could not sing to Alcor, Mizar, Gilese, Polaris, Arcturis, Pollux, Aquila. Could not see them as he should, and even as his family held him tight in a warm embrace, he felt empty and cold, small and overfilled as he was. He fell asleep grieving a life he could hardly fathom, or forget.

Tucker Foley was not a happy guy. Not only because his best friend had been a full ghost for longer than he should’ve been - which was at all in Tuck’s book - but also because Danny was in the hospital. Tucker loved Danny a lot, he was his brother in all but blood, but no matter how hard he tried, Tucker couldn’t bring himself to go visit him in the hospital. The situation Skulker had put his leg in was enough hospital time to last his entire life.

So he was stuck outside of being able to see Danny because of his own stupid phobia, and he swore his bones were filled with concrete since Sam’s spell brought Danny back. He had a feeling he knew why that was though, since he couldn’t hear that kinda creepy but beautiful music behind everything anymore, and Sam complained via text that she couldn’t feel the vibes she used to get from her book anymore. She was also sick as a dog and while Tucker definitely came by to visit with snacks and reassurances that he was as fine as physically possible, he didn’t stay too long since getting sick was Not on his to do list. 

What was, however, was finding a way to keep Danny from constantly getting hurt. At least, as much anyway. Lucky for Danny, Tucker was acing his sewing class, had made clothes before, had ran through the most inexpensive non metal armor options out there on ecosia for nearly a whole day, and knew how to work the charm on one Dr. Jack Fenton. All it took for that last one was mentioning to Mr. Fenton that having something to keep ghosts from being able to possess them, and Tucker could almost see the math going through the man’s head.

The rest was covered by a combination of Sam’s ridiculous allowance and Tucker’s cousins giving him the leather when asked, assuming he was making a leather outfit for cosplay. “Note to self, make leather outfit for cosplay.” When he got to work sewing the jacket up, Sydney nearly made Tucker’s heart jump out of his chest when he tapped his shoulder. “Jesus!”

“Sorry,” Sidney mumbled. “What’s cosplay? And what’re you doing?”

“It’s alright,” Tucker said, patting Sidney’s shoulder gently before getting back to work. “I’m sewing Danny some leather armor, and Sam ordered a silk shirt in his size since they’re the same size. And uh, cosplay is when you dress up as one of your favorite fictional characters.”

“That sounds fun! But uh, doesn’t armor need like, I dunno, metal in it?” Sidney furrowed his brows. “How’s leather and silk supposed to help besides looking stylish?”

“Leather is actually really good when it comes to handling slashes and stuff, and silk is so difficult to pierce once woven tight that most military and SWAT officers use spider silk for their armor.” Tucker huffed. “I might be able to make something with that Fenton Fabricator™ but for now, I know this will work to give Danny some protection.”

Sidney sucked in a breath and nodded, since he had actually  _ been _ to the hospital to check on Danny. He knew the ghostboy’s condition better than Tucker, and he tried not to feel jealous over that. After all, the sight had left Sidney glitchy for an hour when he got back. “I don’t know  _ much _ about sewing, but I could maybe phase the silk into the leather for you when you’re done.”

“That… is an amazing idea! Thank you, Sidney, that’d make it easier for Danny to wear like, a regular shirt underneath the armor jacket!” He gave Sidney a high five and didn’t even shiver at the cold touch this time. “Silk is a horrible fabric for sweat, lemme tell ya.”

“How do you know? You weren’t running around in it were you?” That innocent question prompted Tucker’s story of his last LARPing session at furrycon after a shank attempt by a guy who’d wandered into the park where he’d been LARPing at that took their cosplay a bit too seriously. He’d smacked a crazy guy upside the head and gotten a useful lesson out of that.

If someone were to tell Sam that her week was sucking, she’d throw her boot at them for the understatement. After Danny was resurrected, she passed out likely as soon as the Fentons had burst through the doors and woke up with a cold worse than any other she’d had to deal with. The pros of this included hot soup, cool smoothies with fruit from her garden, and not being at school to hear all the muttering and whispering about her best friend. The cons?

“Mom, it’s a  _ cold _ not the black death!” Sam groaned and sniffled, holding up a cup of water. “This is literally all I need right now. Our physician, who you need to stop pestering, agrees with me.”

“Sammykins, your health is important! Just take these antibiotics-“

“You know, if I take those in excess then the germs will evolve to get past them. Evolution works faster on a smaller scale since death and birth for bacteria is so rapid.” This argument. This argument that she had every 90 minutes was the first con to it all. “Please let me rest, relax, and recuperate. I can’t get better without it.”

After a great deal more fussing and a sneeze or two, Sam was left alone in her room with her grimoire, her glass of water, and her much bigger issue. Setting the cup down, Sam closed her eyes and visualized herself, even thought of her essence as the same green Danny had described her aura being, reaching past her fingertips and into the water itself. She tried, willed, searched within herself for it.

Nothing.

With a spike of rage that was almost as exhausting as moving around was, Sam shuffled to her bed and flipped from the spell for making the water rise from her cup and into her mouth, instead stopping on the resurrection spell she’d cast. It was the only explanation she could think of.

“All magick requires energy,” she read aloud, mostly to fill the silence. “To heat something you must cool another, to make one thing heavier you must make another lighter. It is safest to call upon the aid of a spirit with magick rather than channel it through the body, though some spells can only work through the caster’s will. To call back a soul to a corpse, for example, one must pay a heavy cost, typically their life in exchange for the power needed to make a corpse function for the drifting soul again.”

She put the book down with shaking arms and felt a coughing fit hit her like a train. If Danny weren’t half ghost, if the store hadn’t had power, if the sun had been entirely down, if they didn’t have the ectoplasm in their weapons. If if if. One wrong thing that day, and Danny would probably be blaming himself for Sam being a ghost in his place.

“Ok, so it was my magick in exchange for Danny, then. That’s fine. Tucker probably lost his weird music too. But that doesn’t matter because we have Danny again. And the book itself half plenty of magick in it, on it’s own. She could get more access to the Ghost Zone through the Fentons’ portal, and if she knew more about magick she’d be able to use that power. Pulling up her laptop and scouring the internet for bookshops that sold occult tomes, Sam made her decision. “I’m going to make sure no one else around me  _ needs _ to be brought back again, and I’ll have the power I need to do that.”

Between his dreams that he knew were memories, Danny woke up to find he was healing quite a bit faster than his parents had guessed anyone shot by a ghost's ionized ectoplasm would - or even regular old physical plasma, one doesn’t get struck by lightning and get back up the next day. One such bout of consciousness was brought on by his sister's raised voice and Danny saw her redder in the face than she was in her hair.

“-stupid ghost portal! Because you two couldn’t leave well enough alone! Did you know they found ectoplasm in Danny’s  _ blood _ ? I Can’t tell if that’s from the ghost that got here because of the portal in the basement, or because of the artificial ectoplasm that ends up contaminating our food when Mom cooks! Food that attacks us!”

“Jasmine, please listen to us!”

“Why should I listen to you when you couldn’t listen to common sense tell you not to open doors-”

“It wasn’t supposed to be a door!” The silence that followed that shout was almost as loud as his Dad usually was. He’d never sounded quite like that before, though with how fuzzy everything felt, Danny couldn’t really tell what was so off about it. “Jazz, I come from a family of ghost  _ hunters _ and exorcists and all of that stuff, I know how dangerous ghosts are! I certainly wouldn’t have gone opening up the door for them anymore than I would if some serial killer came pounding away at the door of our house!”

“We have never once made a portal to any world that we could actually pass matter through on either side until after we’d gotten a good view of that other side and saw what we were looking at. We always observe before we go in to interact with a place.” Mom sighed and ran a hand through hair that was looking as much of a mess as Danny’s. “The Ghost Zone wasn’t supposed to be any different. We wanted to  _ view _ a world unseen, not invite it’s inhabitants into our own.”

“We wanted proof that ghosts were real, and possibly to find ways to deal with them en mass with support, not charge into the unknown alone.” Dad was trying to reassure Jazz, and Danny was sure it had almost worked. But…

“Wait,” he said, barely a whisper but catching everyone’s attention as he tried to sit up. “Wait what do you mean ‘deal with them en mass’? Deal with them  _ how? _ ” Jazz helped Danny up, and he gave her a quick, small smile. His Dad ruined the moment as he tended to when ghosts were involved by answering Danny’s question.

“Well Danny, as you know, ghosts are inherently malicious beings.” Dad paused when Danny flinched, probably thought it was because of his more obvious situation here in the hospital. “We planned on getting assistance in capturing a few and dissecting them, analyzing how they function so that we can find a way to destroy them permanently. That way they’ll never pose a threat to us again!”

Danny was trembling like a deck of cards in a storm, and he was very thankful that his sister knew him so well. He was very sick in the trashcan she handed him for what felt like forever, his throat burning like acid had been poured right down it. Images of his ghost being vivisected by his parents danced behind his eyelids and everything in him tried to leave, even when there wasn’t anything left.

When he could breathe without heaving up his non existent lunch, Danny set the trashcan down and almost didn’t accept the glass of water his mother offered him. He drank it in a few swift gulps and then leveled the most disgusted glare he could muster at his parents, the lights in the room dim to the point even he noticed it. “Do you - do either of you hear what you’re saying? At all?!”

“Dan-”

“That’s  _ genocide _ !”

“Now that’s an exaggeration, young man.”

“The ghosts are evil, son!”

“Of all the things and biases for catholicism to carry over into your heads, it had to be that?”

“We weren’t Cath-”

“ _ Excuse _ -“

“When have either of you ever tried to peacefully converse with a ghost? What proof-” Danny coughed, his lungs struggling to keep up with his rage, but this was too important to give up on now. “What proof do you have that every ghost is evil?”

“That Skulker and this one that hospitalized you?” Danny had never scoffed at his mother like this before, and he wondered if this was a nightmare.

“Two out of 108  _ billion _ dead  _ people _ do not make a conclusive pattern!” Danny and Jazz had never screamed in sync before, and it startled him so much he didn’t notice that the window was doing dark or that the lights flickered or the rattling shake of his lungs as he coughed again. “See, now I’m agreeing with Spazz on something.” 

“Dad, all the proof you have of ghosts being ‘evil’ is old family bias because Fentons have always been exorcists, witch hunters and the like. Mom, this is the same anti ghost nonsense you’ll hear from anyone of your rural catholic upbring say about the undead. Neither of you have done any research into this based on encounters with any actual ghost!”

“My older brother, Jason, was crushed under a crate by a ghost, Jasmine, and I know that for a fact.” Dad had an expression on his face, a tone in his voice, that Danny couldn’t remember ever seeing or hearing from him before. He could count on one hand the amount of times that Dad had called Jazz Jasmine. He could count even less the times he’d heard about this uncle Jason of his. Dad took a deep breath, closing his eyes and pinching his nose. “I know you kids are young, and at that stage where you think your parents don’t know anything and you know everything in the world, but ghosts. Are. evil.” 

“And if or when you meet uncle Jason’s ghost?” Even Jazz turned to stare at him in horror at the thought. “If you meet the ghost of your brother, or grandmother, or heck what about me? What about Jazz? If we die because of a ghost and come back to see you, if you meet family, what will you do? Would you strap your brother’s ghost to a lab table and vivisect him while he screams for mercy?” Everyone was pale as a sheet in the room, and black spots danced in his vision but Danny kept up his glare. “If my accident with the portal had killed me and you came down to the basement and saw my ghost weeping over my  _ fried corpse _ with Tucker and Sam, would you have seen and comforted your son, or attacked the ‘odd manifestation of metaphysical energy and post human consciousness’?”

Neither of his parents got to answer that question. The darkspots swallowed up his vision, and Danny didn’t even feel his head hit the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Thanos Snap* Well well well well well! We seem to have reached the end of this part of the story! I dearly hope I've kept you darlings well and thoroughly entertained! I can't exactly say when the next installment will be up and ready for reading, but I do want to say thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed and especially shared this little story of mine. Thank you so so much, you've been the biggest help! Have a wonderful New Decade and may your twenty Twenby be splendid!


	14. Protective Destructive Desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny has begun to truly recover from what happened to him, even if he's still feeling weak on the ghostly end of things. Dash is still being an asshole for some reason, Sydney is being an awesome bud and Tucker is keeping Danny from tossing jocks around like socks. But everything can't stay fine forever, as yet another supernatural encounter so soon proves to be someone's final straw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI so this looks like a repost of the original last chapter, but i swear it's not. take a look behind this one at chapter 13 again and you'll find it a little... different ;) I hope you enjoy this slightly different take on the end of this part of the story

Something was wrong with his best friend, and Tucker knew it. He’d finally gotten out of the hospital - at which point Tucker had immediately gone over to check on Danny himself and give him the biggest hug he physically could - and he clung to Tucker like he was a teddy bear. Tucker stayed the night, of course, and Dr. Fenton had even given him the Specter Deflector™ mark 1. Tuck had thanked the jolly orange giant and thought near nothing of his tight, strained smile. Danny had only just gotten out of the hospital, after all, they had every reason to be worried about him.

That didn’t explain why Danny was so quiet and refused to talk about what had happened during his stay at said hospital but if Tucker thought that word one more time he was going to have a fit, so he’d let it go easy enough, pulled the conversation to Dnd and cosplay and the usual nerd stuff. He could carry the conversation until Danny started talking again.

“Should I leave a light on? Actually, I probably absolutely should,” Tucker snorted. “You’re like Superman, right? Gotta keep that photosynthesis up and all that.” He tilted his head and hummed. “Though considering the green, the stealth powers, and all that I guess you’re more… Starfire? Martian Manhunter?” Danny snorted and Tucker cheered, turning away from the belt that he’d just about finished tweaking to ignore Danny’s ectosignature. “Aha, he laughs!”

“Yeah yeah,” Danny shook his head. “Wouldn’t I be like Captain Marvel? He transforms into something more powerful than him and he says a battle cry when he does it.”

“You know what, you’re right. Goin Ghost is as silly as Shazam.” Tucker ducked and huffed. “That pillow was unnecessary!”

“It is a  _ battle cry _ .”

“Y’know you’re lucky no idiot would think a living kid is also a ghost, or the second someone heard that and saw you flyin off to do ghost shit they’d put two and two together real fast.” This time the pillow hit Tucker in the head and he almost admitted that he deserved that. Almost. “I’m keeping this.”

“Then you’re not getting your sweater back, I’ll just use it as a pillow.” Tucker lobbed both pillows at Danny and cheered as one knocked him to the bed. “This means war!”

A pillow fight ensued, ending in a draw and laughter and Tucker leaving the light on for Danny. And if that had been the end of it, then it would’ve been fine.

When they got to school and Dash was acting the way this New Dash acted, however, Danny snarled at him like he had snarled at Hunter, and everyone in the halls that had been pretending they weren’t just standing around doing  _ nothing  _ stared in shock. “Holy shit, Fenton, your freaky family slip you some fuckin animal potion? Tryna get into the same furry shit as your little friend over there and sound like a wolf?”

“Not sure, Dash, have you figured out how to raise your grades without cheating off of someone else, or has all that stagnation made your brains rot?” Danny was scooped up none too gently and slammed into the lockers behind him hard enough that the teachers had to have heard it. “I’d say I was swept off my feet but gods, assholes are just not my type.”

“Have you lost your god damn mind, Fenton? What the hell did you just say to me?” Dash’s face was as red as his jacket sleeve, and Tucker found this particularly impressive. Danny, however, rolled his eyes while the camera phones got whipped out.

“I’d have thought you’d understand plain English since you’ve been taking the class for so long, but I guess you weren’t paying attention. Should I try mandarin? Spanish? Or did you just forget how to understand the words coming out of my mouth because of how hard you get slammed around during football games?”

“Of course a freak like you would be begging for a beating, fentonia-”

“Do you call me a freak because I have more interests than a stupid fucking sport that ends up hurting and killing the people who play it for people’s entertainment? Because while you’re throwing around a ball, I’m gonna be an astronaut, doing something important with my life?” The fist reared back, Danny braced himself, and.

“MR. BAXTER!” Mr. Falluka came storming down the hall just before Dash could associate Danny’s gut with his knuckles, and Tucker swore he saw a flicker of Sidney’s form just behind the science teacher. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

“I was helping Fenton up,” he said immediately, unclenching his fists and letting Danny drop. “He’d tripped over and I thought I’d be nice.” Phones were put away discreetly, no one wanting to be singled out as the snitch to give away Dash, and Tucker quickly pulled Danny away from the quarterback.

“Oh, yes, and your fist was raised for what? Uppercutting him into a standing position?”

“Ok two things: Sidney, thank you, that was an awesome solid.” Tucker held up a hand for a quick high five and grinned when it was given. Then he turned a worried gaze to Danny. “And you, what the  _ hell _ was that? Why did you  _ snarl _ at Dash?” The rest of the insults were a bit harsher than Danny usually was, but that was fine and dandy with Tucker. The angry, inhuman noise his best friend had somehow made with his throat was not.

Danny shrugged his shoulders and pulled his hoodie down over his head. “I dunno man, I just wasn’t in the mood for Dash’s bullshit. By so much that I flipped out, I guess?”

Tucker sighed and slung an arm around Danny’s shoulders. “I- alright, I guess. Not enough spoons for this shit, right?”

“Yeah,” Danny laughed, nodding. “You sound like Jazz, but yeah.”

“Good, cause Jazz knows what she’s talking about most of the time. Now let’s get inside before Mr. Falluka turns on  _ us _ .” They snickered and headed into their seats, Tucker hoping the day would go at least a little more peacefully now that they’d had their Drama™. This was not the way of the world, apparently. Danny snarled, snarked, and generally lashed out at every footballer they were faced with. When Danny bared his teeth at Wes of all people for bumping into him, Tucker pulled him closer and hissed in his ear, “Dude, that’s your fucking cousin! You gotta breathe, man. Don’t let them get to you - did you bring your headphones?”

“Oh what, is Ember McClain supposed to help me chill?” Danny rolled his eyes but pulled out his headphones anyway and Tucker nodded with a grin.

“Yeah, she is. She’s amazing and you’re gonna be less butthurt when you listen to her.”

“I am not  _ butthurt. _ ”

“Well…”

“See?” Tucker nodded in the direction Sidney’s voice had come from. “He agrees with me. You’re butthurt. Now hush and listen.” Tucker plugged Danny’s headphones into his iPod and played Ember’s  Can’t Hold Us cover. The effect was immediate and obvious in the tension bleeding out of Danny’s muscles and the lights growing brighter around them.

“Alright, I guess she  _ can _ sing. It was your voice messing with how I heard the song.” Tucker punched Danny’s shoulder, the three of them laughed, and life moved on. Sam was still sick, but that didn’t stop them from visiting her afterschool, and Tucker managed to keep the conversation away from ghosts and hunting after haunted sites around town easily. No one talked about the dimness in the room. 

Eventually, they had to leave, and Sidney volunteered to stick with Sam since he couldn’t get sick and he’d always apparently wanted to become a nurse when he was alive. Tucker wasn’t touching that with a 10-foot pole. He instead lead Danny into his own workshop and put on a playlist of Ember’s songs to work to.

“Hey, Danny,” Tucker said while he worked on finishing up the Spector Deflector that Dr. Fenton had started for him in Danny’s workshop. “There’s a swap meet coming up in Harrison Park this Saturday. Wanna come with? I’m gonna get a set of dice if I can and see if I can show Sidney DnD. Maybe we all can play even.” He grinned. “We can get you a new bowling ball so you can destroy Sam in bowling.”

“Bro, you’ll be wrecked with her,’ Danny challenged from where he drew in his art book instead of doing his homework. Tucker was procrastinating by making ghost hunting tech, he couldn’t blame Danny. “That sounds cool.”

“Awesome.” Tucker set down his tools and pulled up his safety goggles. “Can you come over and poke this? Very lightly and just a little in case I’m as done as I think I am.” Danny obliged and there was a loud  _ SNAP _ accompanied by a yelp and Tucker patted Danny’s shoulder. “Looks like I’m done with the internals. Now all I gotta do is adjust it so that it can ignore your ectosignature, and Sidney’s and Agatha’s, and it’ll really be done.”

“Done for your armor idea, right?” Tucker nodded and pulled out the scanner that he kept in his jacket pocket. “You’re never giving me my jacket back, are you?”

“This is  _ my _ jacket, I dunno what you’re talking about.” Tucker got to work on programming in the ectosignatures he’d had the foresight to keep recorded in the device. “And yes, this is mostly for your armor. Though, I can totally wear it until I know for sure it won’t shock  _ you _ in particular.”

“Oh thanks, so we’re gonna field test it by seeing how long it takes for me to be able to poke you without being zapped?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” There was a sigh and then Danny was leaning on him, nearly pushing Tucker face-first into the table. “Dude.”

“Thanks, Tuck, for being an awesome friend. You’re the coolest geek out there.”

“I’m not a  _ geek _ Danny, I’m  _ awesome _ . Pick one.” Tucker snorted and Danny huffed a laugh, hugging him. “No problem man. I’ve always got your back.”

“Do I need armor, though?” Tucker rolled his eyes. “I mean, I can see why you and Sam might, but I have superpowers.”

superpowers don’t mean you don’t need protection against people with the same superpowers.” Tucker huffed. “If we’d been wearing some armor like we’re making then that fish thing probably wouldn’t have been able to bite through me like it did. Silk and piercing ya know.” He bumped shoulders with Danny when he went quiet and forced his lips up into a smile. “And besides, your parents have literally no fashion sense. A leather jacket lined with silk? Leather pants, probably with studs in it since Sam is involved? Dude, that’s cool as fuck looking. You’ll be the best-dressed ghost out there.” Danny laughed and shook his head. “You think putting on clothes in ghost form will invert their colors like your suit?”

“Fuck you, Tuck, now I have to find out.” Danny huffed and Tucker snickered. For a moment everything was quiet, and then arms were wrapping around his middle. “Thanks, Tuck. For everything.” Tucker looped an arm around Danny and smushed him against his side.

“That’s what bros are for, man.” The room was a comfortable quiet after that. The Fabricator and the generator were humming softly at the edge of Tucker’s once again human limited hearing, the only other sound was their breathing and - Tucker could swear - their heartbeats. The air was charged with something more than ectoplasm and electricity and Tucker wasn’t sure if Danny knew that as well, but he knew that he could hardly know anything else right then. So naturally, Tucker lowered his hand at Danny’s side and started tickling him. Danny squeaked, squealed out some giggles, and phased out of his grip when wriggling didn’t work.

“You dick! Get over here!”

Saturday was a breath of fresh air. Sidney was off exploring the city on his own, so it was just Danny and Tucker buying the stuff they’d come for and laughing their heads off at their dumb jokes. It was sunny, the crowd was bright with positivity abound, and he was having fun with his best friend in the world. It was nice.

Of course, a ghost attack ruined it.

Cotton candy erupted and flooded the place, and Danny slid under a table while the crowds stampeded away, yanking Tucker under as well. He reached inside, past the void of darkness into the soft and splintered light at his center. It exploded out to the surface and in a flash of silver glass, shimmering shadows wove his hazmat suit around him and unraveled gravity’s hold on his body. He shuddered, glitching out of reality - or what he was so very hopeful and sure was reality anyway - and gave Tucker a smile. “Wish me luck.” He slid down into the ground and forward, rising out of a mound of cotton candy as big as himself. There was a woman with long black hair, dark green skin, and blue scarce clothing floating over the sweets and stretching her arms. “I understand a sweet tooth and all that, but this is a bit dangerously Much.” Danny held out a hand with a smile when a sneer was turned his way. “I’m Danny Phantom, hopefully nice to meet you.”

“ _ I am Desiree,” _ she said in some accented blend of every language that Danny knew. It was headache-inducing and he definitely didn’t like it. “ _ This confection explosion was hardly my intention boy, I am cursed to use my power to grant the wishes of all those who make them. _ ”

“What, like a jinni? If I find and rub your lamp and say ‘I wish I had a dick’ do you complete my tra-”

“ **So you have wished it, so shall it be.** ” Her hands went up, green smoke curled around him, through him, within him, caressed that inner light and warmth that was his human body, and Danny shuddered in the wake of power well beyond his ability to fully process. Before the smoke even cleared, Danny could hear Desiree speaking through gritted teeth. “ _ Yes,  _ **_boy_ ** _ I am a Jinni. One of your kind cursed me, both to be trapped in that infernal bottle, but also to use my power for all who catch my ear. _ ”

Danny was reeling when the smoke cleared, giving himself a mental review of what he could feel on himself and gawked when he realized what had happened. “Um. Wow.” Desiree was clearly unimpressed. “Uh, well, I know a way I can he-” a ball of ectoplasma, charged up with energy, raced into Desiree’s gut and knocked her back and Danny really wished that people would stop interrupting him.

“Stay away from him, damn it! Can’t we have one nice day?” Tucker readied another shot and Danny waved his arms to tell him not to. “I wish I had stopped you from going into that stupid fucking portal! Then we wouldn’t be in this mess!”  _ crud. _

“ **So you have wished it, so shall it be.** ”  **_FUCK_ ** . Green mist filled Danny’s vision, and everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts? Comments? sacrifices for our lord and saviour Danny Phantom?


	15. Careful What You Wish For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tucker wakes to the very same morning he woke to last time he opened his eyes, though the time is all that's really the same it seems.

Green mist, the crackle of the Specter Deflector mk1 resisting the energy in that mist, and then darkness. That was about what Tucker could remember of the fight if you could even call it that. After what felt like forever, he opened his eyes to find he was in his room. Sitting up with a groan, Tucker rubbed his head and took stock of the situation, just like a badass in a movie. “Still in all my clothes from the fight, Sydney isn’t here, Danny and Sam _also_ aren’t here, room’s a mess as usual…” Grabbing his phone, Tucker checked for any panicked texts and saw none. It was just Friday again, Friday morning even. “Alright, so maybe cotton candy wasn’t her power. Ugh, whatever she did it clearly had no effect on me, so that means the Fentons at least know how to make a good protective belt.” Swinging his feet over the edge of the bed Tucker tapped the Specter Deflector and paused. “Oh, wait, will whatever she did affect me if I take off the belt?”

Deciding he didn’t want to find out, Tucker climbed out of bed, brushed his teeth, changed most of his clothes, and checked more of his room. To his dismay, he found that Hunter’s mech was not, in fact, here in his room anymore. “Where the heck could that’ve gone? Mom and Dad didn’t move it last time it was this morning.” He paused, scratching his head. “Did they? Ugh, ok, that’s something to worry about later. If I ask they’ll just get upset that I lost track of it ‘because it’s dangerous’ or whatever.”

Heading downstairs to find his parents in the living room, Dad watching football and Mom knitting something, Tucker called out his usual good mornings and headed into the kitchen for some much-needed bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. Headphones in, the latest Dumpty Humpty songs on, and the smell of food filling the kitchen, Tucker almost didn’t notice the oddness of getting practically no messages from Danny or Sam the whole morning. By now Sam should’ve been complaining about being sick, at the very least.

When he finished up his food, Tucker headed out the door, calling out to his parents, “Gonna go visit Danny, see ya later!” And before they could respond, he was out the door and putting on his helmet. The AI he’d rigged together pointed him toward his board, which he was more than grateful to still have even if Hunter’s suit would be useful, and soon he was in the air. Still, even with no air traffic since the boards weren’t exactly for sale - yet, he needed to talk with Danny about that - he stopped before texting Danny. _He_ couldn’t just phase through a building instead of crashing because he wasn’t looking where he was going after all.

 **Hey Danny, where should we meet up? I’m omw to tell you something wild**.

He guessed, of course, that Danny was at home, so he took off for FentonWorks. Music blaring in his ears, the wind tugging at his body as he did a loop, Tucker considered whether or not he should see if a random girl at the park would find his board cooler than the girls at school. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he blinked a few times, lifting up his helmet to make sure he was reading this right.

**Astroboy: I’m at my uncle’s place, u know that.**

“Alright, the ghost did more than just chuck me back to this morning, apparently. Why would she put Danny at Wes’ place?” Tucker readjusted his helmet and sped off, going a bit faster than before. He took a moment to take in everything below him, seeing no signs of the fight with Hunter that took place outside the library as he passed it. “There should be something there though… the plasma and the lasers _melted_ holes into the walls and street.”

When Tucker reached the Weston home, he was almost certain of what had happened. The ghost had been some sort of wish granter, like a genie, and she’d heard him wish that Danny hadn’t gone into the portal. That explained the lack of Hunter’s marks on the town, without Danny being half-ghost the poacher had no reason to go after him. _Maybe Danny just grew closer to Wes without the ghost stuff in the way?_ Regardless, Tucker went through the awkwardness of greeting Mr. Weston when he answered the door, “Hi there, I’m Tucker Foley. I’m not sure if you remember me but I’m Danny’s friend and he said he was here.”

“Ah yes, Tucker,” the ginger said, taking him in and clearly searching for a memory. “The one he made the hoverboards and the rockets with, right?”

“Yup! That’s me. May I come in?”

“Of course, sure. Shoes at the door and all that.” Tucker kicked off his shoes and Mr. Weston pointed him upstairs.

When Tucker finally found Danny, his good mood at the fact that his best friend didn’t have to worry about fighting ghosts or questioning who and what he was anymore dropped like a lead ball. It looked like a half-assed recreation of Danny’s actual room, desk and posters, and even his Horrorstation all together in one room. It didn’t have the murals of the stars on the ceiling or the walls like in Danny’s real room, but it looked too personalized to be a guest room. Danny looked up from his handheld and waved at him, looking for all the world like something was crushing him. “Hey, Tuck. What’s up?”

“More than I wanted to be, it looks like,” he muttered. Taking a seat on the bed next to Danny - and it was _his_ bed, the exact same mattress - Tucker took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How do I ask this?” His eyes swept over the room, marking where things should be but weren’t, until he landed on Danny again, looking concerned and tense and just as thin as he was before. He wasn’t as pale as he’d been growing but he was still paler than Tucker thought was healthy. “Right, ok. Rip off the bandaid I guess. Say a ghost has, for whatever reason, messed with my memories so that I remember things a whole lot different than they are now.” Danny scowled at the mention of ghosts, the same way Dr. Fenton did. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “What’s happened since August?”

Danny sighed, leaning back on his hands and glaring at the ceiling. “ _Ghosts_. Ghosts have fucking happened since August. Of course, they had to mess with you too, they already messed up everything else.” Danny looked at him again, trying to judge how much of Tucker was the Tucker he knew probably, and Tuck was doing the same. He’d never heard Danny refer to ghosts as a whole with such venom and ice in his voice. It wasn’t right. “After you convinced me how stupid it would be to actually go inside the Ghost Portal, Mom and Dad figured out what was wrong with it - an extra switch inside that would’ve had to be pressed to activate it - and after they fixed it, it _worked_. Jazz had a fucking fit when she realized she was wrong about Mom and Dad being delusional for believing in ghosts.” Danny looked down, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I wish she was right.

“At first it seemed like the portal was working the same way all the other portals worked: a window into another world for Mom and Dad to look through and examine what was happening on the other side. But then something actually came _out_ of the thing.” Danny shuddered and Tucker threw an arm around him. “I remember seeing the ectopus thing for the first time. It was so... w _rong._ Like a messed up hologram that made my eyes hurt to look at it. We all had weapons, thank the stars, but it took a while to get that thing back into the portal.”

“Ok, so it was a door and they didn’t want one of those yet, so they tried unplugging it,” Tucker said when Danny went quiet. He remembered this conversation when Hunter came up. “But it didn’t work that way. Self-sustaining or something, right?”

“A self-sustaining interdimensional intersection that was apparently powered on the other side as much as it was on ours. Stars, Tuck, the freakin Lunch Lady from the 50s came through - or rose up in the cafeteria kitchen, I guess. Either way, when Sam had her menu change thing done and we started a food fight with Dash over it, the ghost lady set the kitchen and cafeteria on fire because we were making a mess of her cafeteria.” Danny scoffed and Tucker winced. “Mom and Dad to the rescue with the Fenton Foamers, since regular extinguishers and stuff wasn’t working. That one got them attention,” he muttered. “The whole town suddenly had their eyes on us, so Mom and Dad did a press conference and then the whole _world_ was paying attention. And then things went _wrong_.”

“Went wrong, how?” He almost didn’t want to know the answer but at the same time, he knew that he should know what happened because of his wish. This was his fault, and he needed to know what.

Danny curled up in a ball under his arm, and his breaths grew a bit shallower. Tucker was certain he wasn’t going to say anything but a moment later, Danny opened his mouth and forced out the words like they stung his mouth to say. “This giant fucking ghost hornet killed Jazz while I was in the counselor’s office and talking with Ms. Spectra about how the media circus was affecting my home life.” He leaned against Tucker, face streaked with tears and chest heaving. “Jazz fucking died of a giant hornet sting and I was talking to a _counselor_. One who fucking ratted my parents out called them neglectful and said they were endangering us at home and CPS shoved me into uncle Walter’s house.”

Tucker knew what being punched in the face felt like, Dash had made sure of it. Now, however, it felt a thousand times worse. Like someone had taken a hot poker right out of a fireplace and shoved it into his chest. “Oh my god.”

* * *

Tucker stayed with Danny as long as Mr. Weston would tolerate, getting the fact that the Mansons were moving out because of the danger in Amity out of him before they played some videogames to get all of this off of their minds. It didn’t, of course, because nothing could get this off of Tucker’s mind, but he had to at least _try_ to get some normalcy out of this for Danny. He got curb stomped by a HellKnight and Danny took on being the Doom Slayer while Tuck stewed.

 _How the hell am I gonna fix this?_ That one thought bounced around in his head, the only thing besides static, and for what felt like forever, it didn’t go anywhere. Then he checked the news app on his phone for once in his life and saw that cotton candy had flooded the swap meet. _I’ll fix it how I messed it up. I just need to find that ghost._

When Wes knocked on the door and told Danny it was time for dinner and heavily implied that Tucker should probably leave, he got up and squeezed Danny in a hug. He got squeezed right back, and it was weird how quickly he’d gotten used to the hum of energy under Danny’s skin that he couldn’t feel anymore. How odd it was to think _this should hurt a bit more_ just because your friend was hugging you as hard as he could, but without superstrength.

On the flyby heading home, Tucker made a detour to the swap meet and started looking, though he wasn’t entirely certain what he was looking for. “Something Alladin-esque, I guess,” he muttered under his breath. Reaching into his jacket pocket thankfully produced the ecto signature tracker he was hoping for, and he followed it to several shards in front of a stand _near_ the center of the cotton candy flood. That was good, at least. The woman putting things away gave Tucker a swell of hope, even if he felt she was probably wearing too much pink. Hopping off the board and removing his helmet he cleared his throat.

“Are you Madam Babazita?”

She stood, turning around to raise a brow at him. Pointing above at the sign that said Madam Babazita's Mystical Oddities. “Who else would I be, kid. Are you here to help with the cotton candy clean up?”

“Actually, I was here to ask about the uh genie that got released around here.” The Babazita turned her full attention to him, and Tucker flinched. There was a sharpness in her eyes and something… off. He didn’t want to make her mad.

“Oh really? You’re here about the djinni?” She looked him up and down and spread her arms out. “I didn’t see you here when her lamp broke.”

“Well, not this version of this morning, no.” He chuckled and cleared his throat again. “I jumped the gun and made a wish without realizing that she could grant them. The only reason I remember all of this, apparently, is because of this.” He raised his shirt to show off the Specter Deflector™. “It blocks out ghostly energy. Is there anything you can tell me about this genie ghost thing that would help me to fix the mess I made?”

Madam Babazita stared at Tucker for several long moments, her beakish nose raised high and her eyes sharp as a hawk’s. After another beat of silence, he opened his mouth to plead a better case than ‘I made a mess and need your help to fix it’ when she held up a hand. “Alright, kid. You look like whatever you did, you regret enough to keep bothering me about it. I’ll tell you about that djinni, but if you get hurt fighting her that’s your fault, not mine.”

“Got it.” She frowned at him and Tucker winced. “I understand, madam.”

Learning of Desiree’s life was a sad story to hear, but finding out that she was compelled to grant any wish she heard was a lifesaver. Sure, it sounded rough having to fulfill everyone else’s desires and not your own, but Tucker needed that kind of guarantee that he could get what he needed so long as he asked for it correctly. Unfortunately, that would have to wait. The sun was going down, and his parents probably didn’t want him out late with ghosts on the loose.

* * *

There were things Tucker could get away with, such as staying out particularly later than he should, ignoring all the vegetables on his plate and generally being less engaged in dinner discussion because his parents weren’t the parents he knew. Not exactly, anyway. A few months could really change someone. One thing he could _not_ get away with, however, was taking a shower in Angela Foley’s household. So, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took off the Specter Deflector™. Nothing happened. Opening his eyes, Tucker found nothing had changed. He could remember everything from how it was _supposed_ to be and he didn’t get any new memories aligning with what Danny had told him. “That’s one mystery solved,” he muttered. That done he got rid of the rest and cleaned, trying to devise a plan.

When he woke up the next morning he _had_ a plan. It was a relatively simple one. “Find Desiree, unwish my wish, and the world is fixed.” He put the belt back on with his new outfit of leather pants, a green sweater and a leather jacket he’d found sitting in his closet. “If she can change reality this much then who knows what else she can do? She probably remembers me shooting at her.”

Even with the wildness of a ghost messing around with people’s desires and a huge, overly public case regarding the town crazies who discovered the afterlife - a thing that Tucker was going to file under ‘think about in more depth later’ - life still went on. There were movies to attend, and people still went to them. This was not the place where Tucker expected to be dealing with a ghost of any sort. And yet, here the tracker pointed him, leading to Paulina… chibified. “I know chibis are supposed to be cute, and on-screen they are, but this? This is horrifying, and I don’t like it. I dunno how anyone else thinks this is cute.” Everyone in the theater was going nuts over Paulina, who steadily grew into a seven-foot-tall chibi version of herself. “Oh wow, the weebs are feeding her power or whatever. That’s just great.”

Riffling through his jacket pocket, Tucker felt the handles for familiar weapons - an ecto-pistol, a tube of lipstick that also shot lasers, the wrist ray he should have on and was now putting on- but none of those guaranteed he’d be able to get the ghost energy _out_ of Paulina. Was this a good idea to act on? “Only one way to find out…” Aim, charge, _fire._ A beam of green struck chibilina in the forehead, dead on, and her supernatural form rippled with a green light. Everyone turned to Tucker, who sucked in a sharp breath, ran for his board, and flew away.

“Ok, I don’t have a weapon on me that can push the ghostly energy out of someone,” he muttered, hoping and praying that Paulina couldn’t also fly. “Good to know. Ugh, where would I find a wish obsessed djinni?” He looked down below him, and up above him even, hoping he’d spot any kind of clue as toa car flew within an inch of Tucker’s face and it’s tailwind dragged him into a spin.

Once he corrected himself in the air and almost caught all of his breath back, Tucker focused on the car zooming around through the air with green energy pulsing through it. “I know we were talking about making flying cars happen, but not like this.” He flew off and after the car, having to push the engine of his board to keep up, and knocked on the driver’s side window. “Uh, hello, this is technically speeding, I do believe.”

“DUUUUDE WHAT THE HELL!?” The blond surfer stereotype screamed, bringing Tucker to question his style and location. There were no beaches in Minnesota.

“Roll down the window!” Tucker pointed at the button, which the guy thankfully hit, and Tucker reached in to grab the wheel and steer the man away from the city. “Alright, so I don’t know how to drive exactly but I’m pretty sure there should be some brakes down there.” No sooner did he say that than the car stopped. It stopped dead in the air, and gravity took hold - a thing it did at inconvenient times. Thankfully, Tuck didn’t have to scream for the man to hit the gas again since this sudden a drop kept him from being able to catch the air needed for screaming. When they started moving forward and up again, Tucker clung to the car door and wheezed in his helmet, shaking his head. “Find. Empty. Parking spot. Think about going down. **_Slowly_**.”

“Oh what, just fuckin _think_ about it going down smoothly and it’ll go down?” Tucker, who was on his hoverboard of all things, was being glared at. By some surfing wanna be. He had no time for this kind of bullshit.

“DID YOU WISH FOR IT TO START FLYING AND IT FLEW?!” the guy flinched and nodded, face screwing up with concentration as he steered the car. Tucker felt free to let go as the vehicle descended toward an empty-ish parking lot and began to slow down. When the car landed and Tucker hovered only a foot off the ground, the man practically kicked his door open and wrapped Tucker in a hug. “Whoa! Ok, ok this is happening.”

“Thank you! Fuck, man, thank you so much! I almost died, flying around in a car!”

“Yeah, I’m looking to find the person who did this so I can stop her.” Tucker gently pushed the man away and started floating up higher, his visor flashing with a status update on his board. It might need maintenance after pulling speeds like that. “You just do your thing, probably avoid using this car for a while. Buh bye.” That said, he sped off into the sky.

* * *

“You’re serious?”

“Would I be telling you this if I wasn’t 100% serious, Sam?” Tucker groaned, sitting on his board on the roof of the school. It was the only place he could think of that’d be abandoned on a Saturday. “I know how to be serious, you know!”

“I dunno,” Sam drawled, “you can be pretty insensitive.”

“Enough to joke about messing up everyone’s lives with a wish?” Tucker glared at his phone. “Sam, Jazz is _dead_ in this timeline! I wouldn’t joke about being the cause of that!”

The line was silent for a long moment, and he checked to make sure he hadn’t been hung up on. Finally, Sam sighed the crackle of it in the receiver matching the static in his head when he learned about that little tidbit. “Fine. Ok, let’s pretend I believe you. Why do you want _my_ help instead of Danny’s?”

“Pardon?”

“Danny’s the one with access codes to all the weapons his folks have for fighting ghosts, not me. Why are you telling _me_ this instead of Danny?”

“First of all, I have the weapons I need to fight her if it comes to that, which gods I hope it doesn’t.” With all the chaos she was causing, Tucker didn’t want to get into an actual fight with Desiree. He had a feeling Danny wouldn’t have won that fight with his powers either. “Second of all: gee Sam, I wonder why I didn’t tell Danny that I essentially got his sister killed with a hasty wish?” The line was silent, and Tucker took a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry, if I sound harsh or anything I just. You’re the one who comes up with most of our winning ideas, and I don’t wanna hurt Danny any more than I already have. All I need to do is find Desiree and make a wish. Any ideas on where she might be?”

“Well, she might be at a place where people typically go to make wishes. Everyone has a desire to ask for pretty much all day but a wishing well or fountain or something would probably do the trick.” There was a loud clacking of keys and Tucker winced.

“You need to ease up on that poor keyboard.”

“It’ll be fine. There’s a wishing fountain around the middle of Magnus park. Heck, toss a coin in and make a wish of your own, that might get her attention.”

Why hadn’t he thought of that? “Thanks, Sam, you’re the best.”

“You know I am. And Tucker? Be safe, or as safe as you can be.”

“Safe as anyone can be going after a djinni, yeah. I will be.” Tucker nodded and hung up, slipping on his helmet. Putting in the directions for the Magnus park fountain through his PDA, Tucker took off into the sky and hoped that things went even a bit ok.

* * *

Finding Walter Weston as he wished for a million bucks and peridot green mist swirled around him like a caress as a familiar voice spoke was not what Tucker would call ok. Still, he took the opportunity to stop another stupid wish from getting twisted - a million bucks could be quite a few deer or even just that much money crushing him under its weight. Slowing down enough to not break anything, Tucker swerved, yanking Mr. Weston up out of the smoke, and dropped him off a few meters away. Looking up, Tucker saw an infuriated Desiree glaring down at him and shouting in a language he didn’t understand.

That was fine though. He didn’t need to understand her just yet. She understood wishes in English just fine, clearly. “I wish that I hadn’t interrupted your conversation with Danny!” The djinni stared at him, eyes bright red with obvious fury, but her hands glimmer pink and green, and the mist wrapped around him again.

“ ** _So you have wished it_** , **_so shall it be!”_**


	16. Freedom and Foreboding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny had just finished dealing with one problem when a sort of old problem reared it's ugly head and made itself a priority. For once, he may have to deal with a supernatural entity the same way any Fenton traditionally would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will put the warning here because it only makes sense to me: there will be mentions of school shooting in this chapter, mentions or at least hints at suicide. If you want to skip over that then when Sydney says Spectra's name skip to “I’m looking her up..."

“Uh, well, I know a way I can help.” Danny smiled, rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry for making that wish without asking your permission but I have a feeling you’ll like this one.”

“ _I’m certain._ ” Desiree sighed and turned to fly away, but Danny couldn’t just let her go like that. People made wishes haphazardly all the time, and interpretation was a horrible thing to mix magick into.

“I wish that you were free of the curse that was laid on you.” She froze, turning to stare at him with wide red eyes. Pink and green light gathered around her fingertips and she raised her hands.

“ **_So you have wished it… so shall it be._ ** ” A cloud of smoke enveloped her like a cocoon, and Danny squinted into it. A wave of force exploded from the cloud and all the booths shook with the energy released, Danny being knocked to the ground. When he looked up, Desiree was blue-skinned, her silver armbands violet and her dress a dark green. Eyes like stars looked down upon her new form, bottom half still a cloud of wispy mist, and she slowly began to smile and laugh. “ _I’m… free? I’m free! Thank you, Danny, thank you so much!”_ She flicked her hand, pink and blue ripples of light fixing up the cotton candy explosion and even setting Danny on his feet properly. “ _I had thought I’d never be free of that wretched curse!_ ”

“No problem! Just, if you can avoid it, please don’t go hurting anyone?” She arched a brow at him and Danny winced. “I mean, I’m kind of trying to keep everyone, ghosts and humans alike, safe in my town, you know?”

“ _I cannot promise not to hurt_ **_anyone_ ** _but I won’t be staying in this Realm for long._ ” Desiree smiled, a sharp and dangerous baring of teeth and a gaze fixed on something far beyond them that Danny felt pity for. “ _After all, I have to find the fool who did this to me and show him how it feels. And then, I’ll return to my own realm, and a queendom of my own shall be mine!_ ” She laughed, lights and swirls of colors that his brain had no way of making sense of dancing around her, and throughout the park. After a moment, she sighed and patted his head. “ _Thank you, Danny. Stay safe._ ” And in a swirl of pink that might not have actually been pink, she was gone.

Danny took a moment to feel all warm and tingly inside about how he helped someone so easily, and then he let everything slide past him and through him, flying into the ground and then back up under the table. The cold of his ghost curled back up into a ball somewhere within him and his skin regained its color and warmth, the world settling back into a thin extreme indigo lense. He crawled out from under the table cloth and found Tucker, staring at where he had been, and tackled him. They tumbled to the ground with a yelp from Tucker and Danny laughed, rolling away from the zap of the belt. “ _Dude_ , Desiree is a Jinni! I wished for a dick and now I have magickally transitioned.”

“Don’t let my being crushed into the ground by you fool ya, I’m genuinely overjoyed for you about that.” Tucker lifted his head and laughed, deactivating the Specter Deflector before dragging Danny into a hug in the grass. The hug lasted longer than he felt this deserved, even if he was over the moon about it. It was also tighter than it should be, and Tucker’s gold was streaked with all kinds of wild blurples, marshons and even some grick.

“Dude, are you alright?” Danny patted Tucker’s back when he just squeezed tighter and sighed. “Ok. We can do this, but like, we’re gonna get stepped on.” Tucker relented, finally, and they got up, dusting the dirt and grass from their clothes before Danny was hugged, again. “Tuck?”

“I… we need to talk, with the others too.” Well, this promised to be interesting at least. A good distraction from what happened before, hopefully.

* * *

It was not, in fact, a good distraction from the shapeshifter that had essentially murdered him (Sam was not the cause, no matter what she probably thought, and he needed to tell her that at some point, she deserved to hear it). No, instead Danny, Sydney and through the skype call Sam listened to Tucker tell them about how he’d wished that Danny hadn’t gone into the portal and apparently all hell broke loose from that. On one hand, it was almost freeing to know that even if Danny hadn’t caved to peer pressure like an idiot, the portal still would’ve been wrong when it turned on. It _ached_ to know that if he hadn’t died in there, his sister would’ve died out here.

But the burning in Danny’s soul was nothing, apparently, compared to Sydney. “Wait, Tucker, did you say, Spectra? As in **Penelope Spectra?”** Oh boy, Danny knew that tone and he didn’t like it.

“Yes…” Tucker backed up a bit, while Danny shifted to stand in front of him, hand in his pocket. “She’s the guidance counselor at Casp-”

Sydney glitched, glitched hard. His features stretched, twisted, overlapped before settling on the image of a corpse, blood dripping from his mouth and the back of his skull as he hissed fury that made the skype call lag and crackle with static. “ **Penelope Spectra should be dead like the rest of us! I- show me a picture of her.** **_Now!”_ **

“Ok, ok,” Tucker said, pulling up a picture from the school’s website. “There’s surely plenty of people with that name, Sydney, no need to freak out.”

Except, he did. When they pulled up the image of a ginger woman with hair done up in what looked almost like horns and a red business suit, the air around Sydney shone with green and his eyes were pits of red light. “ **THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! NO ONE CAN SURVIVE A BULLET TO THE HEAD LIKE THAT! I SURE AS HELL DIDN’T AND NEITHER DID ANY OF THE OTHER BULLIES LIKE HER!** ”

Tucker, slowly, exited the browser and reactivated his Specter Deflector™ while Danny gently tugged Sydney back from the screen. It stung, the dark reddish colors radiating off Sydney like heat, anger that wasn’t his own boiling in his chest. Danny took a slow, deep breath, and when he breathed out he pushed the anger out of him with it. “Breathe with me, Syd. Can you do that?”

“ **I’m** **_dead_ ** **buster.** ”

“Yeah, and you don’t need to breathe, but _can_ you?” The glitching slowed ever so slightly, and Danny brought his energy as close to the surface as he could while still human. “In and out, c’mon. In,” the heat receded, concentrated, burned darker for it. “Out.” It dissipated in waves, ripples of static on his screens and Tucker grabbed the laptop to keep the current from ruining it. They did that, breathing, for a while until Sydney looked less like a floating corpse and more like a monochrome translucent image. He rubbed his arms and looked away while Danny turned to lock eyes with Tucker. Tucker was busily typing away on the laptop now that nothing was interfering with the wifi signal. “Tuck?”

“It’s a good thing Sydney stays away from the school,” he muttered, Sam snorting over the line. “Is it possible for an unagitated ghost to have some color and look like a human being?”

“Uh, not that _I_ know about.” Danny glanced at Sydney and gave him a pat on the back. “Syd?”

“I-I don’t know… I’ve been a bit stuck, on the other side you know?” Sydney was becoming fuzzier at the edges and Danny sighed when he realized the other boy was invisible. “Maybe someone else would know.”

“Right,” Tucker drawled. “Syd, do you wanna come with us to go ask Agatha about this? If we’re dealing with a well-hidden ghost, then I wanna make sure you two are on top of your game. A hearty meal, or I guess a ghouly meal, is essential for any fight.”

Sydney at least flickered back into something easier on the eyes if not fully there, and he chuckled. “Uh, maybe? Who’s Agatha?”

“Agatha Reece,” Sam said over the call, pausing to cough into her arm. “She’s the ghost of a lunch lady at Casper.” Sydney’s white eyes went wider than humanly possible, a touch of sepia seeping into his greyscale.

“Ah, you know what, I think I’ll just head out and go see some sights. I’m sure you two don’t need me to help you grab a snack.” With that, Sydney flew through Tucker’s ceiling, and Danny leaned back in his chair, a heavy sigh on his lips. It felt like a lot of pressure just rose off of his chest, though there another pressure entirely coming from his swirling thoughts.

“It’s a damn good thing I got Sydney out of the school before he actually _saw_ Dash doing the shit I ranted to him about.” They all laughed at that, and Danny felt a bit lighter still. “Though, I imagine school’d be pretty interesting without him.”

“Yeah, we could actually walk around without worrying about getting shoved into a locker.” Tucker stretched his limbs out, and Danny felt an ache in his joints just at the reminder. “What a stereotype.”

“As much as I’m glad to cheer on the virtues of Jazz’s therapy sessions with Sydney,” Sam cut in with a shaky, light laugh of her own. “We still need to figure this Spectra thing out.”

“I’m looking her up and while she’s not stupid enough to use the same name over and over again, her picture is sorta _everywhere_ over the past five decades,” Tucker muttered. Danny got up and rested his chin on Tucker’s shoulder, taking in the image of a barely, if at all, changing face go throughout the ages back to the 50s. “Cause if she’s a ghost, she’s gotta be using a _lot_ of energy to keep looking like that.”

“That’s _if_ she’s a ghost,” Sam said. There was a long moment of quiet after that, and Sam went off-screen, grabbing some book that looked older than Spectra. “Guys, you just said a Jinni flew off to get revenge on a ghost, how do we know there aren’t _other_ things out there.”

“Mom and Dad _have_ been to other places before…” Danny felt his hand slipping out of reality as the realization hit him like a football to the face. “They’ve made so many windows to other places and then if a drone could survive going in, they went in, and then Jazz and I went in with them. Holy shit, what if there was stuff in there we just couldn’t see?”

“What did Sydney and Agatha call the other side?” Sam sniffled. “The Infinite Realms? There’s probably a whole lot of things that Spectra could be.”

“Based on this track record of depression, she’s either a shitty psychologist who doesn’t get how the human mind works, or she’s fucking up people’s lives on purpose.” Tucker shifted so Danny could see the news article that he was looking at better. “That’s a lot of people who went from average mental states to killing themselves, or going into self-isolation.”

“Maybe she likes ruining people’s lives,” Sam muttered. “There’s plenty of legends and myths about things that like to do that. Danny, have your parents made anything that might help reveal a supernatural being hiding as a human?”

“I… maybe? I’ll have to check, I haven’t been paying attention to their weapons or anything lately.” He had been actively avoiding anything offensive that his parents made besides the plasma rifle he had. He wasn’t looking to have things go off on him, after all. “Tuck, you check with Agatha about what Spectra might be and I’ll head home, see what Mom and Dad have worked on. Sam, you see if you can find anything on, I dunno, emotional vampires or straight-up assholes who love ruining lives in folklore.”

“Can do, captain, but there’s a lot of the latter in every kind of story.” Sam offered a wave before ending the call and Danny sighed, sagging in his chair.

“Look at you, takin charge like a hero.” Tucker hugged him again, and Danny leaned into his side.

“Yeah. Let’s hope I can keep being a hero.”


	17. Artifacts and Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny takes a look in the weapons vault for something useful, Tucker gets some info, and Sam has a moral debate in her head instead of out loud.

To say that the situation between Danny and his parents was tense would be to say that space was a little dark and a touch chilly. Ending an argument by passing out was dramatic, yes, but not conducive to following that argument up with maybe something calmer, more reasoned out. On one hand, Danny was never going to be reasonable about the idea of committing genocide on the dead, a feat he was almost entirely certain was impossible and yet even if it _was_ possible, it would be akin to setting off all the nukes on Earth at once. It was a horrible idea, and if he thought about it any further Danny knew he was going to start causing things to float and go icy cold and dark. He may have accidentally frozen part of his room when he got home from the hospital.

So, instead of asking his parents ‘hey Mom and Dad, have you made any tools or weapons to expose a shapeshifting ghost?’ like he would’ve in the case of a slightly less tense relationship with his parents (he could _see_ the threads that bound him to them, and they were strained, thinner than before, and that frightened him), Danny had to check himself. Which meant going into the kitchen and heading through the door, down the stairs and ignoring the second flight of stairs that’d lead to the lab (to the portal, to his Death, to his Undeath, to all the hurt he’d ever experienced compounded over itself all at once). He instead kept going down a hallway, one that held two doors, both sealed up. One was the Cursed Artifacts vault, and it didn’t surprise Danny that he could see light pulsing at the edges of the door, calling out to him in a way that he could see but not hear and yet _knew_ was a cry all the same.

“I bet there’re dolls in there. Not even because they’re actually cursed but because they _think_ they are.” Instead of finding out how cursed anything in there actually was, Danny turned to the other door, opening it up and looking out across rows and shelves of weapons. The walls were honeycombed with drawers like file cabinets. The ones that were open were typically the more experimental ones, while the rest were connected to the Portal Pockets so that they could be summoned on the fly whenever needed. Checking over the experimental shelves, Danny tapped his fingers against his arms and legs, trying not to think too hard about any of these things being used against him.

“The Fenton Ghost Gloves,” Danny read from the notecard written in his mother’s patient script. “When activated the gloves release a steady current of metaphysical energy (hereby referred to as ecto energy) across their surface, facilitating tactile interaction with a ghost regardless of the ghost’s selective tangibility. Concept derived from the Specter Deflector™ as suggested by Tucker Sazad Foley.” He put the card back and sighed. “Not what I needed but good to know about. Maybe Tuck and I can make some of these of our own - if it’s in the experimental phase then it’s fitted to Dad.”

Danny walked over to the Next New Thing. He groaned, running a hand through his hair and tugging on the curls. “Looks like we need a new mixer. That was _mine!_ Just cause Mom can’t make anything but cookies or fudge doesn’t mean that they should just. Argh.” He huffed and then picked up the card for whatever his precious mixer had been sacrificed to make. “The Fenton Ghost Peeler. Oh, wow, they couldn’t get a potato peeler for this one? Capable of… stripping a ghost layer by layer, peeling them like an onion, so as to weaken it for capture or for examination post-capture. Yikes.” Setting down the card, he picked it up and examined the buttons, keeping the obvious business end away from his face. “That sounds painful, probably even sadistic, but I guess this is what I’m after.” He pocketed it, placing it not with standard weapon storage but his own private little pocket that only he had access to outside of emergencies.

Making sure the door was locked, Danny walked to the stairs and ignored the plethora of colors radiating from the tiny seams of the Artifacts vault, and the star-like pull tugging him downward, deeper, toward a world still unseen. He had this world to worry about, and the next one could wait.

* * *

Flying his way to Agatha’s soup kitchen would’ve been faster than using his skateboard but if Hunter had taught him anything, being subtle could be a life or death thing. With that shapeshifter on the loose, Tucker felt being subtle was the right path to go down while alone. Tucker moved with an ear and both eyes open for trouble, which he felt like he was going to get. When he got within 2 blocks of the kitchen, however, that feeling vanished, replaced with an acute awareness of how hungry he was and how little ectoplasmic food Danny had eaten. That surety that he was being watched and hunted faded away and Tucker stopped, looking around. “Note to self, shifter won’t approach Agatha’s territory.”

When he actually got there, the volunteer at the door was one of the same ones who had to be convinced to let Agatha in without calling the Fentons. She had dark skin, bright brown eyes, and long curly hair done up in a bun. She smiled when she saw him, waving. “Hi, there! Tucker, right? You were one of the kids that brought Aggie to us?”

“Yeah, though most people call me TF for Too Fine.” He shot her a pair of finger guns with a grin and a wink, not even flinching when she laughed at it all. He was hardly serious about that right now, and even if he were everything took time.

“Kid, I’m 21. That’d be the creepiest thing under the sun for me to call you.” Tucker laughed with her then and they shook their heads together. “What can I do for ya?”

“I uh need to speak with Ms. Reece. If she’s available.” Tucker knew he wasn’t Danny and that Agatha had no explicit reason to talk to him, but he hoped that his being best friends with the kids who’d gotten her into this place would be enough. He wasn’t a researcher on Sam’s level but he knew she’d need some description beyond ‘malicious supernatural entity’ to figure out what Spectra was.

Daisy - and that was her name, he remembered now - blinked and shrugged before patting Tucker on the shoulder and leading him over toward a door marked Staff Only. “You wait here and I’ll see if Aggie can meet with you.” Tucker nodded and leaned against a wall, scrolling through his phone and looking over Spectra’s staff profile again. His eyes narrowed at the mention of an assistant, wondering what a school counselor needed with an assistant.

Before he could look into this Bertrand Baxter, however, a white holographic head poked through the door and Tucker jumped to attention, Wrist Ray™ aimed and charging. He took a deep breath, put away the weapon and offered a shaky smile at Agatha, who managed a sheepish one herself. “Sorry about that, child. I’ve just been in the habit of it and everyone round here has gotten used to me doing that. How are ya deary?”

“Hello, Ms. Reece,” Tucker said with a wave. “I’ve been better. And you?”

“Oh, I’m doing well! I just wish I could do more.” She frowned. White rippling edges began to tint green. “So many people are out there just like these dears, who can’t get a good meal.”

Tucker frowned as his brain worked double-time to figure something out. He didn’t want Agatha to grow unstable and dangerous because she realized the limitations of being in one place. What did he learn by proxy as Danny’s best friend? _Ghosts can do things to satisfy their desires in efficient ways on scales grand enough to terrify. They curse objects to_ _spread their malicious machinations beyond their haunts_ _do things they normally can’t. They-_ “What if… you made lunch boxes that always restored themselves? Always have a healthy meal inside of them? Then you can give those out to people all over as fast as you can make em, and feed just about everyone.” Tucker had no clue if she could even _do_ that but he dearly hoped so. Not only because he was worried about his own immediate safety - though he was - but also because if she _could_ do that and managed it, then that would be unbelievably great for pretty much everyone in the world. He may not have Sam’s grand, overarching passionate goals as he was very much grounded in the real world not the ideal one, but ghost powers made _everything_ possible.

In any case, Agatha stopped turning green. Instead, for a moment, Agatha didn’t look like a ghost the way Tucker knew them to look. Her skin was a warm brown, her uniform pink and white with thick yellow rubber gloves and her eyes were full of life in a way that Tucker hadn’t ever seen in her or Sydney.

For a moment, Tucker got a clear glimpse of what Agatha was like when she was alive.

She flickered back to that holographic quality and beamed at him. “Oh, Tucker! That’s a wonderful idea! I’ll get to work on that in my Cafeteria! But you came for more than solving my problems, didn’t you?”

“I’m happy to help, Ms. Reece, but I _did_ need to ask you about someone.” Tucker cleared his throat and braced himself. “Do you know about Penelope Spectra?”

Agatha’s hair ignited, eyes turned into red pits of fury and her body shone lime green. **“What bout that ishka?** ” Oh, Tucker almost disliked that icy cold tone as much as he did the sound of Agatha’s fiery and immediate rage. 

“She isn’t human, but she _is_ back at Casper high and Danny, Sam and I need to know what she is to get rid of her.”

“ **Hod that filthy, joy suckin-** ” Agatha went on a list of what Tucker could only say were old Minnesotan Not Swears. He was impressed that she was refraining from swearing up a storm with how long she went on, but a lack of lungs made ranting names about someone pretty easy, he guessed. “ **-get back without my notice?** ”

“You were a touch busy with us,” Tucker soothed. “Do you know what she is?”

Agatha took a breath and closed her eyes, the fire that was her hair snapping around waspishly. When she opened them they were focused on Tucker like a microscope. “The Infinite Realms are called that cause they’re endless and infinite. Every kind of world you can imagine and all the ones you can’t exist, and some of theirs end up here. **Spectra** ’s from what ya call the Abyss. The Ocean of Dark.” Agatha shuddered. 

“ **Penelope Spectra is a rippling, inky darkness that pulls your greatest fear, your greatest sorrow, the darkest worst thing within you that you resist day after day, or even that you don’t up to the surface. She makes you face everything you think is wrong with you, even the tiniest flaw in the back of your head that you know better about yourself, and spits it back at you with all the force of a wave crashing down and drowning you in misery and self-doubt. And then she feeds on it like a festering parasite.”** Agatha’s face twisted up in disgust. “ **She is suffering and fear and misery, and she wreaks it upon her victims to feed herself.”**

“That’s… quite the description.” Tucker didn’t dare take his phone out to take notes just yet, all too sure that’d look like disrespect to the ghost.

“That **Ishka** got **me and half of the school killed! I’m bein rather generous in how I call her.”**

“Understood.” Tucker nodded and took a step back. “Thank you for your help, ma’am.”

“And thank you kindly for the idea, Tucker. Stay safe and aim well.”

* * *

“Damn, that’s a description,” Sam muttered, pages flipping in her hands and herbal tea resting half drank next to her. She was slowly recovering from both a bug that seemed to be going around and the drain from her spell. Still, she had a feeling that unless she found some powerful artifact straight from the Infinite Realms it was back to her martial arts and Fenton Weapons for all defenses. Fine against a meathed like Dash, but not so fine when it came to dealing with an emotional vampire.

“It sounds to me like she blames Spectra for what Sydney did,” Danny said, “Which is probably something Sydney might need to hear. After all, if Spectra’s track record is something to go off of then…”

“Let’s save _that_ for later, please and thanks.” Sam sighed. “I don’t need to think about that right now. What I _do_ need to think about is… aha! Alright, thanks to a bunch of internet searches and checking through a few translated books, I think I have an idea of what Spectra is.” She finished her cup of tea and made a face at the strong taste. Regardless, it should help. “Agatha said something about the Dark Ocean, right?”

“Yup.”

“So, while she could be a few things I think the closest match is a Fomorian from Irish myth. Seafarers from the Middle East that came to Ireland centuries before Tuatha Dé Danann arrived there. The Tuatha De Danann are gods,” she answered before Tucker could finish asking. “With our admittedly limited knowledge on ghosts, I’d say that a group of monstrous entities from a dark ocean finding their way here through a portal of some sort and becoming part of legends makes sense.” Sam sighed, leaning back against her wall of fluffy lavender pillows. “If the Infinite Realms are really that and beings from other realms can just make a portal here whenever they feel like it, how many myths, legends, and religions can be traced back to something from another realm hopping over to Earth?”

No one said anything for the longest moment and Sam sneezed into a tissue. Tucker cleared his throat and pushed through a near palpable wall of awkwardness that Sam had established. “What kind of things do the myths say we need in order to hurt her?”

“Well, fighting a Fomorian effectively sort of requires you to use a magickal weapon of some sort. I’m pretty sure that magick is just ectoplasmic energy at this point, so we’re good there.”

“Now we just need an excuse for me to shoot a staff member with an experimental weapon made by the town crazies.” Danny huffed and Sam sucked her teeth at that. How would they corner her without anyone stopping them? Finding her at night sounded like a horrible idea if she was from the Dark Ocean, and dealing with her during the day likely meant at lunch, which would mean the entire school would be available for her to use against them.

Tucker grinned on her screen and puffed out his chest. “Well, that part’s actually covered by Spectra’s own bullshit planning. She has an assistant registered with the school, and you’d think someone with such great planning skills wouldn’t have an assistant with living family members come with her to the school where his grandson goes to.” Sam’s eyes widened and she leaned forward as Tucker sent a link and a picture of a man captioned as Bertrand Baxter. “Yes, _that_ Baxter.”

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered. “All we need to do is get Dash to expose his grandfather as dead and we’d have Spectra dead to rights as either an accomplice in a haunting that’s been hurting the school at the very least. If we can line up the shot right we-” Sam cut herself off with a violent fit of coughing and sneezing and leaned away from the screen with the force of it all. Once she was done attempting to cough up her entire lung, Sam wiped her face with a fresh tissue. “Ugh, I guess I mean if _you_ can line up the shot right. I feel utterly useless like this.”

“Well, if it’s alright I may be able to help with that.” Sam didn’t have the energy to jump like her body wanted to, but she did turn quickly to see Sydney Poindexter floating sheepishly in front of her, head turned to look off into the nearest corner. “I uh. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, and after you and Danny showed that he can heal people with a little effort, and after a little talk with Jazz, I thought maybe. Maybe I can try? I have more energy to spare, at the very least.”

For a second Sam considered telling Sydney to leave. After all, he’d flat out admitted to what the rumors about him had stated: he snapped and shot up the school. That was inexcusable. And yet, a soul-sucking misery demon looking to feed on every ounce of negative emotion that she could had been an influence, hell might’ve even been the whole driving force. And Sydney had basically been put through torture before _and_ after. Part of her felt that he should be pushed away, shoved in a thermos and returned to the Realms and the other remembered that Agatha, one of his victims, blamed _Spectra_ for what happened to him. Sam would’ve let this moral debate in her head go on forever if she could, really. 

But then her lungs had another fit and she decided that pragmatism won out here. So she held out her hand and sniffed when she could. “Go ahead, not like this can get any worse.”

Sydney beamed, his form sliding further into focus and opacity, and he took her hand. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he concentrated, so much like Danny she wanted to laugh. But then she felt how different from Danny he was. Danny’s energy was **vast light bright protection** and Sydney felt more **gentle cautious guilt warm soft** in a way that Sam was hard-pressed to define. But then that warmth spread slowly and steadily through her body and it was like a fever but five times as intense. And then the energy cooled, stealing away the extra heat to soothe her, and Sam felt bone tired. Her sinuses were cleared and all that, she could almost certainly tell, but she was so _tired_. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I guess I was able to knock out your flu but you’ll need your own energy to handle any sort of restoration?”

“Let Sam rest a couple days, Syd,” Tucker said at the edges of her awareness. Sydney pulled her up in her bed and her protests died on her lips as warm comfy blankets were tucked around her. “We’ll take on the shadow lady when we’re all at 100 percent.”

“Fine, I’ll rest, but I want a new weapon to compensate.” With that demand gotten out, darkness overtook Sam and the sound of Tucker instructing Sydney on how to turn off her laptop correctly faded out.


	18. Ghosts and Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz was struggling to process the weird things going on in her life. While she was far more interested in psychology than parapsychology, she /did/ offer a ghost a bit of therapy now and then and he seemed to be doing better for it. That was all the ghostly interaction she really needed.
> 
> the giant hornet in school apparently disagrees with her on that.

It truly amazed Jazz what the mind could conjure up during stressful events. For instance, it occurred to her right this very second how odd it had been to cool even slightly down from the argument days before over ghosts with her parents only for the ghost of the infamous Sydney Poindexter to show up in the library seeking comfort and a safe person to vent to. The topic of Sydney’s guilt had been hard to stay objective about, but between his clear and honest regret, his admitted decades of hell in a replica of Casper in the Infinite Realms (and wow, she shouldn’t be surprised that ghosts had a name for the world they manifest in but there she was) and the fact that Danny had befriended him led her to feel Sydney was, while not at all justified in what he’d done, not as bad a person as he’d been making himself out to be. When she asked questions he responded much more clearly than when he spoke unprompted, she’d noted, and so she’d asked right away if there was even one person he could remember who didn’t hurt him. The green and sepia bleeding into his form nearly vanished as his older brother, his little sister, and the school nurse came to mind.

His brother hardly cared about the things that he was being bullied over, doing his best to keep Sydney looking toward the future and making amazing things to lift his spirits. Apparently, he was a genius like Tucker and Danny, a compliment that made Jazz smile at the time. His little sister didn’t know enough to really understand it all but she was unerringly sweet and a source of sunshine that he never ever mentioned at school. The nurse, however, had been the brightest of those three lights in the dark for him, as the nurse wasn’t family and had no pre-established reason to be nice to and patch up the gross, nerdy queer kid that everyone else had shown nothing but contempt for. She did it anyway though, and he’d aspired to be a nurse like her one day. This aspiration led to more bullying, of course, but Jazz suggested he try learning how to heal people up the same way that nurse had him, and a look of realization and hope crossed his face before he hugged her, waved, and flew off. That had been a very good ghostly encounter.

The giant hornet casting a sinister green glow over the hallways as a long, slimy black tongue curled around her entire skull and sharp mandibles the size of said skull extended to their most open was distinctly not. Jazz would never look at bugs the same way again. Before she could even manage to get a scream out of her though, the whining charge of one of her parents’ weapons filled her ears and the hornet jerked back with a sound that could’ve been pain, could’ve been fury, and mixed the kind of clicking hissing one expects from a bug with a very human voice. There was a burn mark on its center dripping ectoplasm that smelled _awful_ , and it turned big black eyes to the same ghost boy she’d seen before. But now Jazz _knew_ he was dangerous because that was a Fenton Plasma Rifle in his hands and his eyes were torches, hair flicking between cloudy wisps and crackling flames. “ **Did someone call for an exterminator?** "

“Oh, you think you’re funny!” The fucking hornet said, starling Jazz into motion - backing away slowly so as to not draw its attention. It flew like a blur at the boy, stinger cutting a gash in his suit and up his arm that leaked a thick green fluid and the rest of it’s lower half crashed into him with enough force to slam the boy into a few lockers with a bang. “Swat _this_ , big boy.”

“ **Buzz off** ,” the boy growled and the lights flared up brighter around them. He swung the rifle at the bug and the green ectoplasm shone a blinding white as it fired, burning a hole straight through the hornet and drilling it through the wall between the school and its yard. The boy flew after it and Jazz took a deep breath. There were ghosts fighting in her school, one with her parents’ weaponry. That one _had_ saved her though and _Jazz_ also had Fenton weaponry on her. She rushed outside to help, determined to keep her savior from being skewered by a hornet.

Jazz poked her head out from the hole that the boy had made and froze. He was smacked out of the air by one of the long hairy legs of the hornet and into a tree and his head cracked loudly against bark. As he slid down his body was enveloped in light that retreated inward to his center and left behind Black hair, tan skin, a nyan cat hoodie- “Danny?”

Her whisper went unnoticed in the face of a green ray piercing the hornet’s left wing. Bleeding ectoplasm in three places, it curled in on itself into a mass of green goop that dove into the ground and everything was still. Danny looked around with bright green eyes as he clutched his head, before growling and punching the tree. He stood up slowly, closed his eyes and grew difficult to look at, to even see as the light within a foot of him grew intense like a halo. He let out a breath and slumped against Tucker when the other boy made it to him, checking him over.

Jazz stepped back away from the hole and took deep, shaky breaths. _My brother is a ghost._ That thought played over and over in her head even as a teacher gently guided her to her feet (when had she sat down among the debris?) and to the nurse’s office. It was only when Danny appeared in the nurse’s office, wrapping her up tight in a hug and rambling a mile a minute to ask if she was ok in every way he possibly could that her brain shifted focus even slightly.

“Well, I didn’t get stung. Just licked by a dad sized hornet and saved by a ghostly teenager.” She hugged Danny back just as tightly, and tears began to flow as his argument to their parents before he blacked out in the hospital bed came back to mind. _If the portal accident had killed me, would you have comforted your child or attacked the ghost in your lab?_ Danny’s arms went slack for a moment but Jazz clung tight to him. “I just. I just need a moment. Please?”

Instead of pulling away and cracking jokes about gross sibling feelings her blessed baby brother hugged her back again and nodded into her neck. “Of course, Jazz.”

“I swear to every star that listens,” Danny said behind his bedroom door where Jazz really shouldn’t be listening in. “Next I see of that smart-mouthed, rancid piece of protoplasmic _filth_ I’m going to turn him into a **smear** and burn him.” _That_ certainly sounded more like Dad than Danny.

“At least save me a little bit to beat up,” Sam’s voice called through the speakers of his newly upgraded laptop. “I _just_ commissioned your Mom for a ghost fighting melee weapon _and_ Sydney’s healing me up pretty fast.” So Sydney knew about all of this.

“There’ll be some of Spectra left to beat up with that once the Peeler has finished its work.” _What?!_ “Probably. Maybe. It’s made to weaken the target not kill them.”

The scoff she heard was definitely Tucker and definitely in the room. “Yeah, you’ll leave a scrap of shadow that none of us can distinguish from our _own_ shadows, that’s something Sam can beat up.” _Shadows?_ “I think the ectoplasm is enhancing your emotional response.”

“You’re right Tuck, if someone threatened Jazz’s life normally I _wouldn’t_ try to shoot them into a pile of goo. I’d only beat them up with the gun.” Jazz would normally admonish such a violent reaction, and aloud she might if she was in there and not eavesdropping. But truly, if someone hurt Danny they’d find out what a 1st degree blackbelt can do to them.

“I think Sam will be good to go either tomorrow or the day after.” Sydney’s voice crackled over the speakers like static. “I think your healing powers mesh better with living beings than mine can since you’re halfa human.”

Danny sighed and Jazz moved back into her room, sitting down to process. She pulled out her notebook and set it on her desk, mechanical pencil already in hand. “Organize all my thoughts and maybe it’ll make sense. What information do I have?”

  1. Danny was in an accident involving the ghost portal and it changed him.
  2. Danny was vehemently against their parents’ anti ghost genocide plan
  3. The ghost boy she’d seen at school the other day was clearly the one that had attacked the hornet thing when it attacked her
  4. Danny had all the access to the Fenton Armory as she did with their porta pockets, which was effectively _full_ access.
  5. Danny was too smart to give any unknown entity their only model of plasma rifle
  6. Danny had directed Sydney Poindexter of all people to _her_
  7. Sydney knew Danny on a personal level that he wasn’t willing to fully disclose to her.
  8. Sydney had called Danny half-human and Danny hadn’t corrected him, nor had Tucker nor Sam.
  9. Jazz saw the mystery ghost boy transform in a flash of light into her brother, who proceeded to hug her and act much the same he had since the portal accident.



Her conclusion? Danny had died in the portal when it turned on, and now he was a ghost, fighting off ghost robots and giant bugs with their parents’ weaponry. Sam and Tucker knew about it, and he had befriended at least one ghost. This was, of course, the most ridiculous thought to cross Jasmine Dana Fenton’s mind in her entire life. But then, her parents had opened a portal to the afterlife and she’d just been attacked by a giant glowing green hornet.

“Ok, Danny is a ghost. He didn’t _tell_ me that, but for obvious reasons,” she muttered to herself. “That must be what he was going to tell Mom and Dad before and now he doesn’t have the courage to try again. Oh _god_ Danny _died._ ” Jazz picked up Bearbert Einstein and hugged him close, deciding right then that she was going to hug Danny a lot more from now on. Just to make sure he was still there. That was a silly thought, but she _needed_ to be sure.


	19. Hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No plan survives contact with the enemy, they say. Danny wishes they were wrong about that.

Dash Baxter was a conflicted person right now. He’d been feeling off practically all school year, and Valerie, Star, and Paulina were about ready to tell him to fuck off while they went and did their own awesome friend stuff. If he was pressed to think about it hard, he would say that it started when Manson had gotten the school to change the menu for a whole ass week. Now, Dash typically cooked or baked his own food anyway, so it was hardly something that sucked for him but plenty of his teammates bought lunch at school and they weren’t weird vegans like Manson! He’d gone up to her to give her a piece of his mind about all of that shit since he couldn’t exactly go yell at a teacher, and maybe he shouldn’t have yelled but he was angry and his voice got louder when he was mad.

Then Fenton got between them like Dash was gonna throw hands with Manson or something. Don’t get him wrong, he knows how dangerous a girl can be – Valerie would never have been friends with him if he didn’t respect how dangerous a girl like her could be – but his father had raised him to never lay hands on a woman. And besides, Dash wasn’t feeling violent! Or, at least, he didn’t think he had been.

Except that when Fenton got between them, Dash had been pissed. He’d gone from mad to unseeing rage and stuffed one of the dumb mudpies in Fenton’s face, and then Fenton started throwin the garbage, and then a food fight happened. Now, some people might think that his year was off because of the fire that happened after this food fight, but it was actually the start of it. Dash Baxter only threw hands when someone was threatening his friends, not for getting between him and someone else. Not for nothing. It was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever done in his life and he felt horrible about it afterward but he couldn’t think of what had gotten into him.

Worse still was when it kept happening. Mikey and Lester were rambling kinda loudly about some stupid card game and Dash got annoyed, went over to ask them to quiet down. Then there was this weird this rush of some sorta warm slimy something down his spine that was there and gone in a flash, and he was barking at the two of them, “Shut the hell up or else I’ll make you.” He almost didn’t realize he’d said that but then Kwan elbowed him hard in the ribs and Dash winced, running a hand through his hair. “God, did I say that? Shit, sorry dudes I didn’t mean that!”

Except… he did. Dash was the one who said it, right? And he said it practically automatically, without even thinking it. Was that who he was becoming? Was he turning into his grandfather? Kwan promised him he wasn’t, Vincent said he wouldn’t let Dash turn into his gramps, but then Dash was shoving scrawnier kids into the lockers out of his way, and he’d been about to mouth off to Fenton for no freakin reason other than he was there and his freaky mad scientist parents had to be the ones to put that green fire and stuff. Then a god damn monster popped out of Fenton’s locker, attacked Foley, and Dash was out of there. 

Right after the fire the school had everyone set up meetings with the counselor, Dr. Spectra, and Dash went too, just like everyone. She even gave him a journal to write his feelings down in so he could work out what he was feeling and put it in words at his own pace. He didn’t like how she was implying that he couldn’t put his feelings into words at the same speed as everyone else, but if she was then hey, she wasn’t… she wasn’t _wrong_. And after writing it all down in that black journal, Dash came to a bit of a conclusion: Fenton was at the center of all of this.

Danny Fenton was a bit of a freak already, his eyes glowed when he was pissy even back in 6th grade and Dash knew it had to be because his parents were mad fucking scientists and either they experimented on their kids or the radiation in their house had gotten to em. And now that freakiness was popping up and destroying the whole damn school! Hell, Dash was pretty sure one of the Fentons’ damn ghosts had stuffed a buncha frogs down his pants the other day, cause he heard laughter when he ran away. But that had _nothing_ on how _furious_ Dash had been when Fenton called him **stupid**.

Dash wasn’t fucking **dumb** he was a little **slow** but so were plenty kids! Nerds and geeks like Fenton and Mikey and Josh all thought they were so fucking smart that they could get away with calling anyone else **stupid** ? Dash had been planning on educating Fenton on just how _smart_ an idea that was. Then Falluka yelled at him and Kwan… God, Kwan looked so fucking _disappointed_ in him.

So Dash was feeling a little conflicted and a lot shitty when Danny Motherfucking Fenton walked up to him in his star trek hoodie and said, “Dash I need your help.”

“Oh yeah?” Dash snorted and sneered at the smaller boy. “Why should I help?”

“You remember the monster thing that nearly tore off Tucker’s leg?” Dash paled a bit and nodded. “Something worse is lurking in the school. Something _smart._ We need your help to expose it before we can get rid of it.”

“So you want me to put my ass on the line and risk getting mauled because your freaky monster is out here lookin to eat someone?” Dash scoffed and turned away. “I ain’t stupid, Fentina, no matter what you think.”

There was a _growl_ behind him and the hairs on Dash’s neck rose up. He tensed and damn near sprinted when he remembered that Fenton was packing heat. Maybe he _was_ stupid. But then Fenton sighed and the lights flickered. “Dash, did you notice that you’ve become more and more of a jerk lately? You used to be the awesome jock who could run faster than everyone but Valerie and you made cookies for the whole class.

“Now you insult everyone at every turn and you tried to beat me up for telling you off. Doesn’t that feel _wrong_ to you? I know nobody wants to believe my parents about the ghosts but you saw the monster, you saw Tucker bleeding and this is _real_ Dash. And what do ghosts do in movies?”

“You sayin I’m possessed, Fenton?” His voice was shakier than he wanted it but it made… well sense was the wrong word but it lined up. “Wouldn’t I blackout or somethin?”

“Not necessarily. Some ghosts are smart n subtle and they can make you do things, feel things enough times while you’re awake that it’s habit-forming. My friend Sydney Poindexter can show you.”

Dread hit Dash like a tidal wave and he turned to bolt. Then he was **_cold_ ** and he relaxed all over, went deathly calm. He was submerged in the utmost chill vibes. Then he was utterly terrified, so much so he almost needed a change of pants. But then he was over the moon happy, frothing at the mouth **pissed** and then calm again.

The heat slowly returned to Dash’s bones as the back of something- _someone_ filled his vision. Then he was looking at the bucktoothed, weak chinned weird movie hologram ghost of - if Fenton was to be believed - _Sydney fucking Poindexter_. “You see, Dash,” Fenton said while Dash stared at Poindexter with a very real sense of dread and awareness that someone who could fly could catch him faster than he could run, “if Sydney here were to possess you from time to time and adjust your mood and behavior just a little bit each time, especially over the few months we’ve been in school, you’d start doing everything he made you do on your own. You wouldn’t notice it either, it’d feel like your own feelings.” Dash finally looked at Fenton. “Got the picture, Dash?”

“... I thought your family hunted ghosts down?” Dash’s voice was as small as he felt. Because of that, he nodded quickly when he realized he’d been asked a question. “Y-yeah, I get the picture. I’ve been. I’ve been fucking _possessed._ ” Icy hot fury and horror filled him up to the brim and Dash shook, fists clenching and unclenching. “I’m being haunted by someone and they’re fuckin with what kinda person I am. But who the hell would do that?”

“Dash, Sydney is going to hide so that Ishiyama doesn’t turn on the security system and shoot holes through him - and he’s a good person, Dash, trust me.” _Yeah, sure he is._ “And we’re gonna go to the principal and have her call a very specific person to the front office. I need you and I to be hiding right next to the door to the hall, because when he sees you, he’ll know what’s happening.” Fenton reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out- ok, he really did have bottomless pockets because no way he kept a gun _and_ a belt in there. He handed it to Dash who held it in his hands, feeling a bit numb. “Put that on. It’ll give a nasty shock to any hostile ghost that touches you.”

“So that he can’t possess me again, right?” Fenton nodded and Dash was putting the belt on before he even knew it. It clicked into place and he felt a warm _buzz_ rush through him. “Fuck, thanks Fenton. Danny. Do we uh. Do we go now?”

“Dash you’re heading to practice,” Fe-Danny said, and Dash sighed and slumped against a locker. “Don’t worry though, we have a plan.”

“Right. A plan.” Dash took a deep breath and nodded. He wanted to get whatever ghost asshole had been messing him up, making him into a total asshole, right the fuck then. But Fenton was the nerd with the sci-fi gun and a ghost friend here, not Dash. And he wasn’t all that keen on being near Poindexter of all dead people, so he nodded again and half turned. “...This… after this ghost dude is dealt with, I’ll… I’ll go back to normal, right?”

“That’ll take some effort on your part, Dash. Do you _want_ to go back to normal?” Dash whirled around to tell Fenton _of course he did_ but he was just gone.

Dash scoffed and shook his head, walking to practice. “Got his boyfriend’s dramatics.”

* * *

It was legitimately the simplest of plans. Danny had come up with it so it was very simple and easy to understand. Danny and Dash headed into Ishiyama’s office at lunch, Sydney waited just outside of Danny’s own sensing range for him - which had gotten alarmingly smaller since his resurrection - and when Dash identified Bertrand as his late grandfather, Danny, Sam and Tucker would turn him into a pile of green sludge, then go after Spectra after making the case that she was also something inhuman disguising herself to feed off of the students. Simple.

Easy to understand didn’t mean easy to execute. When Danny Fenton of all people approached Ishiyama and said something was up, with Dash Baxter backing him up, she called up Bertrand Baxter to her office. Dash looked absolutely floored by that revelation though and turned on Danny immediately. “Are you saying my fucking _grandpa_ is the one who’s been haunting me?”

“I really hope you’re not like, attached to him or anything.”

“Oh no, he was _awful_ but dude, you _knew?_ ” Danny sighed and nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He could’ve possessed you in the shower when you took off the belt and figured out how much we know.” Danny looked to Ishiyama, who had gone pale and was typing furiously at her laptop. Danny, however, headed to the door to the hallway and crouched down, reaching into his jacket. Dash was still standing in the doorway to the principal’s office, however, and so when Bertrand came in and Danny got to see his disguise for the first time - short, grey slacks with dress shoes and a red dress shirt with a suit jacket and bowtie. His hair was grey and his eyes were green and he looked like a stereotypical rich white guy, reminding Danny how wealthy Dash actually was - Bertrand stopped and stared at Dash for three seconds.

“Oh. **you.** Wonderful to see you again you sissy ass brute, have you been sewing anymore wittle teddybears for yourself or are your sausage fingers too big for that?” Oh, Danny _hated_ that tone. So, he pulled out his rifle, aimed it at Bertrand’s face, and smirked.

“Wow, you looked slimy in life too, huh?” Danny got to see wide green eyes filled with shock and terror before he squeezed the trigger on his gun and Bertrand became a green splat on the wall that Danny would have to clean up later.

“You didn’t even leave a little bit of ass for me to kick?” Sam groaned as she stood up from behind the wait desk, patting the shaking attendant’s back while she got closer. In her hands was a thin metal tube with the Fenton Logo on it and a button, looking to any trained eye like a typical collapsible bo staff. “I got this whole new weapon from your mom and everything.”

“Please don’t say that in front of the principal - and hey, we’ve got more ass to kick.” Danny grinned, maybe a bit wider than humanly reasonable, and turned to Ishiyama. “I’d like to make a complaint about Bertrand’s boss.”

“You can make that complaint to her right here in person, _darling._ ” Danny spun to look at the source of the predatory purr that was damn near right in his ear. Red suit, red hair done up in ridiculous horns, and eyes that were slowly shifting from green to yellow to orange. “I don’t believe we’ve met yet, Mr. Fenton, but it’ll be my _pleasure_ to give yourself and your friends a session. Free of charge.”

“Hm, I hear you, Penny, I do. Counterpoint.” Danny grinned as Sam hit the button and swung her now humming staff - the Fenton Anti Creep Stick™ - at Spectra’s face and watched as it sailed through the air where Spectra had been. The creature named Penelope had twisted back and around fluid as water to avoid the strike and spun around, kicking Sam in the gut and knocking her into the reception desk. Danny snarled and raised his rifle, managing to shoot Spectra in the shoulder.

Spectra flicked the ashes from her shoulder where her suit and ‘skin’ had been burned - though her skin looked more like it’d suffered a fading sunburn than it did a glob of ionized ectoplasmic plasma - and backhanded a shocked Danny. He raised his arms in time to block the nails that were now claws with his jacket, but these sleeves were cotton and simply tore open while he was flung back as well. “Oh Danny, honey, you should really do your research more. I’m not a _ghost_.” Darkness flooded the room and they - Danny, Sam, Tucker, Dash - were in what Danny assumed to be her office. He hissed and pulled out the Peeler, but that was smacked out of his hands and clattered loudly to the floor.

The others disappeared in a cloud of smoke, which the room was steadily becoming. “Come now, Danny, none of _that._ We’re here to talk, after all. About you, before you ask. After all, you have quite a few pressing anxieties to address, don’t you?” A clipboard appeared in her hands from the smoke all around them and she read over it while Danny reached for the bonds to his friends. The threads were… slack, dim, quieter than they should be.

“Daniel James Fenton, your sister had an appointment set up with me for you, worried unlike every other child here you weren’t getting enough attention. But of course, someone like you can never get enough attention.”

“When I get my hands on you I-”

“Ah, that testosterone you keep shooting up with really is making you more aggressive, isn’t it?” Danny snarled at her and she tutted at him, walking slowly around her desk. “Or is that the ectoplasm running through your veins causing you to act out violently on mere speculations and possibilities from what’s more than likely just a bad dream from your little friend. That’s what it does, after all. Corrupt the mind and soul. Oh, but of course you know that, don’t you?

“Your parents have all the science on ghosts at their fingertips and surely you’re smart enough to read up on it. Oh,” she covered her mouth and sucked on her teeth, looking all the world like she’d just noticed something inconsiderate coming out of her vile mouth before vanishing into the darkness. “Oh, well I suppose you could read it but it wouldn’t stick, would it? The dead can’t learn anything new, after all, you’re just an echo of who you were before.”

“Bias and prejudice aren’t science!” Danny raised his rifle again, energy racing to his eyes as he searched the shadows desperately. The light rose to his call, filled him untethered him from the Earth, but what he Saw felt **wrong**. Even the lies the eyes tell him are truer than what was around him and he knew that but he couldn’t see through the smoke. “Sam and Tucker have hammered that into me plenty well enough by now to cut through bullshit like that! And really, I liked your office better after that flubber wannabe and I trashed it.”

A flash of red suit came into view and Danny pulled the trigger, but Spectra was faster than the green hot plasma, and claws swatted his weapon away while slashing at his chest. Thank Tucker for leather jackets and all the protection they offered but now Danny was on his back, the ground and somehow the kind of uncomfortable chair that all schools used to punish the students for the simple crime of being there.

“Ah yes, Sam the rich goth girl who befriended you as soon as she heard that you were the son of the town crazies. The one who warned you away from coming out to your parents so they could help you become normal again - or as close as someone like You can get.” She laughed, the sound of ice spilling down a glacier into the cold dark waters below, and it echoed around him like the chill of a winter night. “Don’t you know she’s only friends with you because you’re ‘unique’? Because you’re a **freak**? Don’t you know, oh so darling Danny, that as soon if you were able to get rid of all this craziness and live a peaceful life, she’d grow bored with you and leave?”

“You don’t know a damn thing about Sam, she’s not like that!” Danny rolled out of the chair and got to his feet, every movement like he was covered in sandbags and the smokey shadows every two feet away seemed to swallow up his voice, growing darker and pressing closer like a rolling tide. Light curled into a ball in his palm, and he hurled it where Spectra was, but the shadows _ate_ his light and left barely a foot in any direction to move.

“Oh and the year you’ve known her has revealed everything to you, hm? Well, I suppose when someone **murders** you with peer pressure and you stick around them it’s clear how pathetically desperate for another friend you are. After all, the only other one you have is your oh so precious _Tucker_ . Precious, pragmatic Tucker who cheered you on to go to your parents about all this, more than ok with you getting dissected for it. After all, he’s a smart boy and you can’t have fooled _him_ as well as you fooled yourself into thinking you’re the same Danny Fenton he knew before you died.”

Spectra laughed again, claws digging into his shoulders, and anger, resentment, and fury rang through his soul, the chime of a burning bell. Light struck Spectra in the face, the Fomorian’s cackles finally cut off with a shriek of pain as she stumbled back and the choking darkness ebbed a foot away again. Danny snarled at her, spying the empty hollowness where his light had sheared off the false skin on her face, another ball of orange-silver light crackling at his fingertips.

“You keep Tucker’s name out of your filthy lying mouth! He would never hurt me!”

“He sure did take his time making you any sort of protection though, and once he got your parents to give him something that made his very touch a taser’s spark to your skin he wasn’t in any rush to modify it for your safety. Almost like he didn’t want you able to touch him, or he didn’t feel like making you something genuinely substantial as protection - after all, he finally got another one working and where did _that_ end up? On Dash.” Danny stepped back when the shadows closed around Spectra once again, glaring into the dark of her office and kicking the desk to the wall for room. It didn’t even clatter against the wall when it vanished from his sight and he couldn’t tell if that was because there _was no wall_ or if he was simply losing his stars forsaken mind.

“Modifying the Spector Deflector took time, you slippery little oil stain, now come out where I can punch you.”

“It hardly took time for your parents to make it, did it? And _oh_ your parents.” She purred, voice taking on a cloyingly sweet tone and Danny shuddered at the cold against his skin, the smoke curling against his jacket and following him as he flew up to the ceiling to make some room. Now, though, it looked like he was trapped in the abyss with no floor, no ceiling, no way anywhere and if he ever stopped flying he would _fall and fall and fall and there was no end to this darkness, no stars to sing to him and comfort him and it was like the times before his very first self_.

“We can’t forget the source of all this anguish can we? Those darn parents of yours that put ghost hunting and science and your better sibling before you the whole of our life and even your afterlife! Oh, even you know now that normal old human authorities would clutch their pearls and steal you away to a safer place to live than with them. How many times have you had artificial ectoplasm in your food, either poisoning you or bringing it to life for you all to fend off? How many times have they barged into your room with no concern for your privacy and dragged you away to do work for them like an intern? How many times have you nearly died because dear old Dr. and Dr. Fenton couldn’t be bothered to make their home a safe place for a child?”

Danny curled up into a ball then, clutching at his head and closing his eyes. The star song that rang through his body and warmed his bones when he was a ghost grew dimmer and darker and colder with each word out of the dark and past the echoes it took a moment to realize that whining sound was coming from him. “Shut up! Shut up shut up, you don’t- so they’re a little clumsy! No one can be the best parents ever, and they love us! They love me!” 

“Is that why they killed you?” That laughter felt like a slap to the face and Danny slipped into intangibility, only to fall from the air as his power left him, and he landed on the cold hard ground, alone and shaking. “Your father so careless with the most outrageously dangerous things that he left a doorway to the land of the dead plugged in even with the door to the lab still open. Your mother, so stubborn, so sure of herself, would never listen to your advice on how to simply not mutate the food that her family eats let alone listen about how ghosts actually work from _you_ . Daddy dearest doesn’t truly care what you _want_ to be, he knows that you’re not smart enough to become an astronaut, skilled enough to live off your art alone, and that all you really have to fall back on is the family business of ghost hunting, so why shouldn’t he talk over you about it all? Your own precious Mommy didn’t have an answer for you as to what she’d do if she _knew_ you were a ghost.

“Oh, your parents are just so awful that they went and let you die, and you don’t want to face the truth of it? Is it because you’re afraid that you’re just like them, keeping Agatha locked up in that soup can for a whole weekend before you let her out, turning Hunter into a splatter on the ground, shooting my dearest little assistant because he’s a ghost? _Or_ is it because you know, deep down, that what they would do as soon as they knew you’re not human is strap you down and cut you up to see what you actually are. You don’t even know, after all!”

His light was a pinprick in the distance, practically gone and with it the gossamer strings that bound him to his friends and let him know he wasn’t alone. They were gone because he _was_ alone, wasn’t he? How could he not be, with whatever the hell he was? There wasn’t a thing out there like him, and if the dark pressing in on him like oil choked sea water swallowed him up then no one would truly understand what was lost. Would they even feel they lost something at all?

“Are you a ghost pretending to be human again? Or are you a creepy little boy with creepy little powers? A changeling left behind by a faerie through that portal, or some kind of curse? Oh, who cares what you are? Not a boy, not a ghost, not a fae or jinni or beast of this earth! Who could possibly care for a thing - a **_mistake_ ** like little Danny Fenton? Or should I say, C-”

 **Orange, fury, protect, love, wrath, HOW DARE SHE** blazed down the bond between Danny and Jazz and filled him with a warmth he’d near forgotten existed. Green light cut through the darkness and engulfed Spectra, peeling away her suit and her skin and the darkness that made her up like one might an onion or potato. “ **How dare you, you worthless parasite? How dare you lay a single clawed hand on my baby brother while you sit here, curled up in your precious darkness to hide from the truth that would burn away your empty, worthless lies?”** Danny had never heard Jazz so angry, had never seen such fire in her aura and it kindled that spark inside of him that was growing oh so distant. “Sydney?”

Danny had never loved the color green so much before he saw peridot flames leap from Sydney’s hands and engulf the room, before sweeping in to swallow Spectra up in a pile of burning _rot_. They were back in Ishiyama’s office and the waiting room before it, Tucker and Sam and Dash all pale and shaking like they were freezing, but the heat of Sydney’s flames and the rage in his screams were like a camp fire in the cold woods. When Danny turned to see Jazz she was practically a chrome and green knight, wearing armor he’d never seen before and brandishing the Peeler at Spectra like a shotgun at a mugger. “I can’t believe I thought someone so pathetic they had to pick at the insecurities of literal children for a misery meal would do anything to help my brother.” She squeezed the trigger and held it until even Spectra’s shrieks of agony were nothing more than echoes in the room.

Jazz turned to Danny and before she was even fully out of the armor he had his arms wrapped around her, clinging tight to the only person that felt well and truly real at the moment. She hugged him back just as fast and relief slammed into the horror and misery and blended with the vindication until he couldn’t tell what feeling it was that blurred his vision and made his face wet with tears, but when Jazz ran a hand down his back he shook with the force of his sobs. Tucker and Sam put hands on his shoulders and the threads between them were a sickly puce and bloody red that had him dragging them both into the hug with him. They stood there, leaning on each other in the office and crying, and some part of Danny knew that they were going to be alright.

They had each other, and nothing could get to them when they were with each other, right?


	20. Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After everything, discussions have to be made in nice soft pjs

Danny sat in Jazz’s room, surrounded by a pillow fort put together in true sibling fashion, wearing his undershirt and his pajama pants with glow in the dark ufos on it. In his arms rested a teddy bear made by his dad dressed up to look like Buzz Aldrin, a soft orange and blue light radiating from it on the second plane that felt like a soothing balm and the soft hum of a lullaby that quieted the frantic buzzing in his skull. Jazz sat next to him in her peach PJs covered in waffles and holding Bearbert Einstein in one arm, the other wrapped around his shoulders. Everything was warm, soft and calm in a way that felt like it belonged to a lifetime ago, and Danny thanked the stars for an older sister like Jazz.

“So, you heard what she was saying through the smoke.” He tried to ask, but it wasn’t a question as they both knew it. They didn’t bring up the fact that no one else - from Sydney to Ishyama to Tucker or Sam - could hear or see through the oily thick shadows that Spectra had wrapped them all in.

“I did,” she answered anyway, brilliant fury and cool worry blending up in her aura and her voice and her eyes till he had to look away at his bear again to see anything clearly. “She’s wrong,” Jazz said after the room had gone quiet for a moment too long. “Mom and Dad do care about us, they love us, and I love you, Danny, no matter what.”

“Thank you,” he breathed, a whisper almost too quiet for her to hear but he knew she heard him anyway. He curled up closer to her and closed his eyes. “I love you too.” And he let that ring, like a thousand tiny bells, down their bond to fill her up with every ounce of sincerity and truth that he could muster and be sure that she _knew_ that he meant it. The wetness in his hair needn’t be commented on, since the wetness in his eyes weren’t brought up. “You have questions, I’m sure. Ask away, Dr. Fenton.”

Jazz snorted at that and ruffled his hair before taking a deep breath. “How… how did you become as you are now?” If Danny were less tired, were he looking at Jazz, he’d have questioned the string between them being tugged on or the light behind her eyes. He didn’t, however, and instead, he reasoned that Jazz’s presence eased the dread that came with speaking of the night that he half joined the ranks of the dead.

“It all started with the portal. Yeah, I asked them about the accident for a reason. I’ll be great for the Halloween season. You know you’ve said peer pressure kills? Far as know you’re half right at least.”

Danny spilled to his sister his tale, holding back tears to no avail, and just as she had in that suffocating dark, Jazz helped Danny see the light, breathe and know that things would be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this looks like the end, the story Will continue on I promise. And even still, there are some edits I plan to make to the previous chapters in even this particular story, so I may not post much for it in a while. Still, however, I love this story a great deal and I hope to get it back on it's feet soon! Thank you for all your support with comments, kudos, and sharing it where you can. Y'all are the mvps


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